Keyword Searches

This section shows how to execute keyword searches using SOAP or XML.

Keyword Searches via XML

A keyword is a general search term that is used to find products in the Amazon.com catalog. Often, more than one keyword is used at the same time to form a short phrase (such as “finance software”). To call a list of products in XML based on a keyword (or keywords), please use the following request format:

Call and Response

Request Format

http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=webservices-20&dev-t=[developer’s token goes here]&KeywordSearch=[subject keyword goes here]&mode=[product line goes here]&type=[lite or heavy]&page=[page # goes here]&f=xml

Response

The KeywordSearch request returns a ProductInfo node. The ProductInfo node contains an array of Detail nodes.

Example

Objective: Generate a list of bestselling books on the topic of dogs in a "lite" XML document.

  1. Subject keyword: dogs
  2. Product line: books
  3. Document type: lite
  4. Page: 1

The URL will look like this:

http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=webservices-20&dev-t=[developer’s token goes here]&KeywordSearch=dogs&mode=books&type=lite&page=1&f=xml

If you have more than one subject keyword, you can simply separate them with "%20", such as:

http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=webservices-20&dev-t=[developer’s token goes here]&KeywordSearch=dogs%20cats&mode=books&type=lite&page=1&f=xml

You would use also use "%20" if you had one subject that contained more than one word, such as "KeywordSearch=civil%20war" or "KeywordSearch=Ronald%20Reagan".

Keyword Searches via SOAP

This section shows how to create a request for a keyword search.  This request will return a SOAP object containing the Lite or the Heavy form of the data.

Call and Response

Request Name

KeywordSearchRequest

Request Format

keyword  string

page  string

mode  string

tag  string

type  string

sort  string  (optional)

devtag  string

Response

The KeywordSearch request returns a ProductInfo node. The ProductInfo node contains an array of Detail nodes.