DVDPedia: Amazon US not returning any results

[azabaro]

Just a few minutes ago, tried searching for the following titles both by title text and by UPC. Amazon US didn't return any results, though they list the titles on amazon.com (other services do return some limited and less-complete results for these):
* Mary and the Witch's Flower (UPC 191329055922)
* Batman Ninja (UPC 883929613472)

I was previously able to search Amazon US using the Amazon Test feature - in fact, less than 24 hours ago I was able to look up Yona Yona Penguin (UPC 816726027210), but when I tried that again just now DVDPedia seemed to skip past Amazon US as a source instantly.

I also downloaded and tried using the DVDPedia beta. Same behavior there.

[Conor]

Thank you for letting me know so quickly about the issue. I have fixed it in the beta version. Feel free to rename the beta and use it as your regular version. It's quite stable and will let me have more tester for the 6.0 release that will be coming soon. I'll put a blog post up about the need for the beta for Amazon US, for other users to see.

Kind regards,
Conor

[azabaro]

Thanks, Amazon US lookup is working now.

[Conor]

Thanks for testing it out. But it will only work for a little while. Talking to Amazon about re-enabling it, they don't seem to think I am following the TOS, even though I have gone out of my way to make it so. Since the discussion is likely to take a while, I'll try to post a how to for getting your own keys that is clear and easy to follow in the next few days.

[vjl]

My bookstore Mac mini is unable to run macOS 10.12 or above. I am stuck with 10.11. You don't happen to have a 5.x beta that this might work on until I am able to purchase new hardware?

EDIT: I should have clarified that I mainly use Bookpedia, so that's the app that's become a showstopper due to the Amazon API changes/search results issue.

[Conor]

I'll update the older 10.11- versions if I get the new associate ID approved by Amazon. Google Books, Abbey and Amazon CA are good sources for searches in the meantime. You can also sign up with your own AWS account and Associate Account, but are looking at making a tutorial for that now, as Amazon has updated the sign up process to have a waiting period for access to the API. They basically want less and less users using the API.

So if you know any great sources of Book information, do let me know as I will add them as search sites right away. Have contacted Good Reads and LibraryThing to add them as future search sites.

[vjl]

Thank you Conor for doing that. Much appreciated. I currently use the ASIN field in my export to populate my Amazon inventory so even though other sources might work with my barcode scanner when I add my bulk purchases in, they won't populate the ASIN field, I imagine.

It wasn't long ago [a year] that I upgraded this Mac from 10.6 to 10.11. I've had a lot of performance issues with Bookpedia and Safari and assumed it was due to the Mac as I did a clean install and just restored preferences. So it may be time for a new used Mac mini - a quad core - but in the meantime I can try the method you suggested and grab a non business Mac that runs 10.12 and migrate data over. I have a lot of processes that run the store so it's not a very quick process. It took me about a month to get all the 10.6->10.11 kinks worked out!

I know I'm an edge case and most people aren't as conservative with upgrading hardware. Thank you for hearing me. It means a great deal and is one of the main reasons I have been using your apps to run my business for last 10 years.

[Conor]

Thanks for the kind words. I'll definitely write up the walk through for signing up for Amazon, as you are the perfect example of users that need access to Amazon as you are actually using the ASIN and building a store from the links, which is exactly the kind of customers that Amazon wants. You would also then be able to run your on associate link, should you create web pages from the data in the Pedias.

The hardware is likely an issue with the latest OS. I have found that upgrading my hard drive to SSD has given my old computer several more years of life and increased performance and stability all around. So that might be an option, if you can find a sale on SSD drives.

[vjl]

Sorry for the major lag in replying - I used to have an AWS account and probably still do - I just haven't done any development in forever [i was using it to create a web app to run my inventory but found Bookpedia while doing that, years ago, and decided it did well over 90% of what I needed the PHP app to do, and I didn't need to spend time writing and debugging it [and though i do web dev, i tend to like native apps for processes that a user is going to spend a long time interfacing with].

I had an associate account back in the 90s until the 2000s when the state of North Carolina was banned by Amazon for having them due to the new tax laws here. Thankfully that was reversed a few years ago so I can sign up again.

I did some major upgrades to the Mac mini - took out the optical drive and it has 2 SSDs which make boot up and app startup times super fast. I see a major lag mainly when command-tabbing from Safari back into Bookpedia after I use the 'open Amazon page' keyboard shortcut key on an entry in Bookpedia [my workflow is to have a collection of books that i've scanned into Bookpedia, select it [i use no data preview in Bookpedia - in order to see most details of a book, i have to double click it from the list in a collection], which opens Safari, then I command-tab back to Bookpedia which since macOS 10.11 / Bookpedia 5.x, gives me a spinning beach ball before I can double click the entry to open the tab where I enter book condition, price, and other data. The reason i open the Amazon product page is to see info that I need to know to make sales decisions - the item's sales rank on the product page, and then all the competing FBA offers for used and new copies of the books [to help me price the item].

I've been thinking of making a video walk through for a few years now, but I knew my hardware and software [until i 'upgraded' to 10.11!] was old as most folks would not have access to a 10.6 system. Now that I will put a new [or used, as i would like a quad-core mac mini!] Mac into my shopping list this spring/summer, and have a nearly modern OS - i may stick with 10.12 - I think a video might help others who want to use Bookpedia in this manner. It has made all but one aspect of my sales a breeze [the most time consuming process i have is processing sold FBA orders - orders that Amazon fulfills - i can export data from FBA sales into a CSV file, so down the road, being able to automate a SQL statement to update the data in Bookpedia would save a ton of copying and pasting, as I need to keep Bookpedia's inventory of sold items up to date since I do another export of Bookpedia to update a WordPress website that contains my books.

Bookpedia is really the central app in my processing and something worth buying whatever equipment it requires! My only complaint is something you had no control over - the sudden failure of the search feature without a "hey, this is going to happen in a month" kind of warning. I wish Amazon had given a heads up, though maybe they did as I am not as active here as I should be on your forums. I need to change that habit this summer!

I do look forward to testing the beta of 6.0 and see what the other pedias have gained, field wise, as that's the main reason for my non-book media, I have to use Numbers to keep my inventory [not enough custom fields and for sale/sold fields in dvd, cd, gamepedias]. Thankfully most of my inventory is books, but any time I enter a game or DVD into Numbers, I am so very thankful for Bookpedia as Numbers is slow and would never be able to expand to the 10s of thousands of books that i have in Bookpedia - i'd definitely would have had to build that php/MySQL system for my books!].

BTW, when I moved from 10.6 to 10.11, I originally kept the HDs . After a month, I migrated both drives to SSD and absolutely loved the speed increase! I just get the odd but consistent hangs when moving between the two apps - Console hasn't reported anything odd during those hangs, but perhaps I am not reading the logs correctly. Regardless - it hasn't been bugging me enough to open a trouble ticket about it.

[Conor]

The beta have been updated to 5.9.2 (minus Gamepedia, still doing some stuff there). In the next few days I will add a few improvements and then port the fix back to the older version and release an official version of the old version. If you have 10.12+ jump on the betas and test them out. Once the release is out I'll post a blog post as I am still to encourage you to sign up with your own account, but for the users were this is not possible they can use the update.

[wkpna]

Thanks for the kind words. I'll definitely write up the walk through for signing up for Amazon, as you are the perfect example of users that need access to Amazon as you are actually using the ASIN and building a store from the links, which is exactly the kind of customers that Amazon wants. You would also then be able to run your on associate link, should you create web pages from the data in the Pedias.

The hardware is likely an issue with the latest OS. I have found that upgrading my hard drive to SSD has given my old computer several more years of life and increased performance and stability all around. So that might be an option, if you can find a sale on SSD drives.

I have an old AWS account myself, and, after realizing DVDPedia's own wasn't working any longer and once I read this thread, I tried signing in with my own... to no avail. I even went into my AWS account, deleted the old key and generated a new one that I then entered into DVDPedia Amazon settings, to the same failed results.

If it's of any use, I am using DVDPedia 5.6 (purchased from Apple's App Store) on an iMac with a SSD HD running El Capitan (10.11.6).

[Conor]

Follow the link in the error, you have to make sure that your associate key is linked with the AWS account. I believe by making sure they both use the same email address login. But if you haven't used your associate account in a while, it could be that it is inactive by now.

[wkpna]

Follow the link in the error, you have to make sure that your associate key is linked with the AWS account. I believe by making sure they both use the same email address login. But if you haven't used your associate account in a while, it could be that it is inactive by now.

I thought everything was ok because I was still able to access my account and manage and generate new access keys, but I did as you instructed me, followed the link on the error warning, and found out that my account has indeed been cancelled. I still don't understand how I was able to manage a cancelled account, but it is what it is.

Since I only signed up for AWS back in the day to make DVDPedia's Amazon search work, it makes no sense going through all the hassle of reapplying now (and I guess that, most likely, I wouldn't be granted a new account).

So, let's hope you can manage to iron out the kinks with them and make it work...

[Rodney]

Any update on this? It is frustrating not being able to get results from Amazon US, and getting wrong results from other databases.

[Conor]

It's fixed in the DVDpedia beta version, but still making some small tweaks before posting an official update. In the beta you have to enable "Amazon Test" by holding down the option key and and clicking in the Help menu in DVDpedia, to try out the fix.