Amazon API - Instant Video results

David Horowitz picture David Horowitz · Nov 4, 2011 · Viewed 24.4k times · Source

I am querying Amazon's Product Advertising API for Instant Video (streaming) results. Everything is working fine -- except that there is some missing information:

  1. Descriptions are not included in results. For example, on Amazon's website the movie "Food, Inc" (http://www.amazon.com/Food-Inc/dp/B002VRZEYM) has the description "An unflattering look inside America's corporate controlled food industry.". When queried via the API, however, no description is returned at all.

  2. Titles of TV shows are not included in results. For example, if you search for the 2nd episode of season 1 of Arrested Development (called "Top Banana") on Amazon's website (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000N2VRJ8), you will get the full name of the TV show, season #, episode #, and episode name. When queried by the API, however, only the episode name is returned.

Does anyone know of a solution to these problems? FYI, the nodeId I am using for my search is 2858778011. Thanks!

Answer

Jonathan Spooner picture Jonathan Spooner · Nov 6, 2011

In order to get more details, you'll need to set the ResponseGroup parameter in your request. See the ResponseGroup section of the ItemLookup documentation to see the different Response Groups that you can use.

For example, setting the ResponseGroup parameter to Large or Medium or Small or even ItemAttributes will give you the description:

An unflattering look inside America's corporate controlled food industry.

for Food, Inc (B002VRZEYM) and the Title:

Top Banana

for Arrested Development season 1 episode 2 (B000N2VRJ8).