Hi rfay, me again!
The documentation, particularly at http://drupal.org/project/amazon needs to be amended so that it's clear that signing up for an API key at the link on the page to Amazon.com will only work for the .com store.
This API key will not work for other sites such as amazon.co.uk, as the affiliates programmes are completely separate. amazon.co.uk simply will not recognise the account or email address as an associate account. The associates programme for the UK is at https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/ and I'm sure there are other pages for the other territories.
With warmest regards
Tony
Comments
Comment #1
rfayI use the API key from aws.amazon.com just fine for all of the Amazon sites.
The *Affiliate* program is completely separate. You need to get your affiliate stuff in other ways, perhaps, but the API key from aws.amazon.com works for all the Amazon sites, at least it has for me, and for a year nobody has made your statement, and lots of people are running sites against Amazon sites other than amazon.com.
-Randy
Comment #2
tonypaulbarkerOK, if technically it works that's fine but something brief would be useful there, as I have spent a week going back and forth with amazon.co.uk and amazon.com trying to work out why sometimes it will recognise my account and sometimes it won't.
Comment #3
tonypaulbarkerComment #4
rfayHi Tony - I don't think people are having trouble with the AWS API keys.
You can look in the watchdog log (admin/reports/dblog) to see if Amazon is giving trouble about the API key. I think you'll find it isn't. To see the messages it spits out, just put in an invalid key.
Please keep debugging though so we can all learn from your experience, whatever is causing it.
Comment #5
tonypaulbarkerSorry rfay, you needn't worry about this anymore. There's nothing wrong with the key, the only problem is that you need to log in to your account at the amazon domain you registered the key. I'm going to add a note to the documentation and then I'll get onto trying to patch for the Artist Store.
Comment #6
tonypaulbarkerActually I'm not sure that's true. I've just found this note. It may be that the links work fine but you're not getting credit for purchases in other locales, certainly from this it would seem that way:
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/index.ht...
Comment #7
rfayThe confusion here is between the API key and the Associate ID.
Your associate ID needs to be per-domain.
Your AWS API key is completely separate and unrelated.
Anybody who is interested in this, follow TonyBarker's link to the Amazon Product Marketing API information.
Comment #8
tonypaulbarkerIs it the case that both API to cover all plus associate ID per domain are necessary to get credit?
If so, someone such as myself that signed up for an associate ID at .com via your link and then referring to .co.uk products would not make any money...
(by the way if you think I'm being a nuisance, this is not for my benefit as I am only using .co.uk)
Comment #9
rfayThe API key is required for you to do ANYTHING. Has nothing to do with the getting credit for purchases. Without it you can't pull any data from Amazon.
You say "your link", but you'll need to be more specific. There isn't anything on the project page that tells you how to get an associate ID, nor is there on admin/settings/amazon.
Please be specific about what you'd like to change.
Comment #10
tonypaulbarkerYes, the problem is not with API at all but with associate ID and the fact that everything will appear to work with one from the wrong locale. This is what I think needs clarifying in the documentation, as new users will not know what their purposes are. I am happy to put a paragraph in the documentation about associate ID but more often than not I only read the documentation if I have a problem and only read the project page. To prevent a .co.uk user signing up for a .com associate ID you could add something like
to the end of this paragraph:
As of August 2009, Amazon.com requires that all access to its data use a site-specific API key. To use this module, you must sign up for an Amazon API account and request an access key. This process is free, but without it, the module won't do anything.
Comment #11
rfayFeel free to add in the docs. I'll try to add your suggestion to the project page.
Comment #12
rfayThanks for your work on the docs.
I updated the project page and removed an obsolete section pointing to the US Amazon.com site in the docs page.
Much appreciated.