Beta testers needed for FREEBS

[Greg]

Want to help debug the next free book store? Got a free MySQL DB?

We need your help!

So far I have the back end written. It pulls from the amazon XML feed and populates the DB with available books.

To test you'd have to...

Backup your site and DB's so nothing goes wrong!
Have an amazon associate ID.
Have an amason Developers Token.
Create a DB and DB user or use an existing DB. (TABLE prefixes are used and configurable.)
Run 3 queries to setup the two tables.
Edit the import script config.php.
Upload the import script and config file.
Run the import script.
Report errors or suggestions.
Report on inspection of DB records.


All of the above is easy to do in phpmyadmin.
Running the script is as simple as an FTP upload.

While you play with the back end, I'll be coding the front end since the back end works for me. That don't mean it will work for you perfectly however, this is testing.

Thanks

[Greg]

Ok, so I just dove in here. Seems I was reinventing the wheel.

I've discovered the amason php class. This little API is a gem.

Gotta change a few lines of code to use it, but it's well worth the effort. I don't have to do any XML query timing or page counting in the code, just pull all the listings in one call to the amazon php class and it does the rest with soap. I pulled 1500 books in munutes.

[Greg]

Progress report...

Using the amazon soap class we can do some powerful stuff...

Using the keyword motorcycle yields 4335 search results from amazon.

The XML pull for the search results to populate the DB takes about 4 minutes.

Of the 4335 there are 859 usable books.

To do a full weekly maintenance of the DB after the XML pull takes under 5 minutes.

There are no editorial rewiews pulled since most of them are copyrighted, pulling them from the HTML page would be illegal in most cases and that's not something we are going to do. If anyone knows different, holler.

So anyway, the back end is done and done using the amazon api. It's under 500 lines of code and is complient to the weekly rule in the amazon tos.

The amazon soap calls and the MySql database are blazingly fast!

The store front end should be a easy for all of you.

[jhughes]

Can you add a wishlist thread. A big one for me would be.

Can you add an option to filter out (not display) the item when the price says "Too Low to Display"

[Greg]

Can you add a wishlist thread. A big one for me would be.

Can you add an option to filter out (not display) the item when the price says "Too Low to Display"

Both should be doable. I'm posting Release 2. I forgot the deletes for similars.

[jhughes]

Thanks, I have not signed up as a beta tester because I have a lot on my plate right now but starting next month if the current testers lose steam and you need someone to take the shop through the paces I would be more than happy to put time and help out.

[Greg]

Thanks, I have not signed up as a beta tester because I have a lot on my plate right now but starting next month if the current testers lose steam and you need someone to take the shop through the paces I would be more than happy to put time and help out.

I'm gonna be done, testers or not, in a month. ( Hope I don't eat those words! )

[jhughes]

It's a great idea to set a deadline. Keeps the motivation of everyone involved at a high level because you can finish the work and move on. I look forward to using your cart.

[jhughes]

I cannot emphasis enough ... how much a good search function for product items will benefit your cart.

[Greg]

I cannot emphasis enough ... how much a good search function for product items will benefit your cart.

No problem man, it's all in the API. I'm building one page at a time from the back out.

Thanks for the suggestions, they really do help.