ebay-rest 0.0.15

Wraps the eBay REST APIs.

ebay_rest

A Python 3 pip package that wraps eBay’s REST APIs.

Installation

Use the package manager pip to install ebay_rest.

pip install ebay_rest    # Use pip3 if your computer also has Python 2 installed.

If you are one of the few people who want ebay_rest to get user tokens, do the following.

Install Chrome.

pip install selenium    # Use pip3 if your computer also has Python 2 installed.

Install Webdriver, aka Chromedriver, for your version of Chrome .

Here is a method for installing Webdriver/Chromedriver on macOS and tweaking security to permit it.

Install HomeBrew

brew install chromedriver

cd /usr/local/Caskroom/chromedriver

cd to the subdirectory that matches your Chrome version, e.g., 91.0.4472.101

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine chromedriver

Setup

Follow the instructions here.

Usage

from ebay_rest import API, DateTime, Error, Reference

print(f"eBay's official date and time is {DateTime.to_string(DateTime.now())}.\n")

print("All valid eBay global id values, also known as site ids.")
print(Reference.get_global_id_values(), '\n')

try:
    api = API(application='production_1', user='production_1', header='US')
except Error as error:
    print(f'Error {error.number} is {error.reason}  {error.detail}.\n')
else:
    try:
        print("The five least expensive iPhone things now for sale on-eBay:")        
        for record in api.buy_browse_search(q='iPhone', sort='price', limit=5):
            if 'record' not in record:
                pass    # TODO Refer to non-records, they contain optimization information.
            else:
                item = record['record']
                print(f"item id: {item['item_id']} {item['item_web_url']}")
    except Error as error:
        print(f'Error {error.number} is {error.reason} {error.detail}.\n')
    else:
        pass

print("\nClass documentation:")
print(help(API))    # Over a hundred methods are available!
print(help(DateTime))
print(help(Error))
print(help(Reference))

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Question: How are API results organized?

Answer:

• Elemental information is stored in dates, integers, strings and other basic built-in types.
• Dictionaries contain related elements.
• Lists contain information organized repetitively; expect zero or more contents.
• Dicts and Lists may be nested.
• eBay classifies data as optional or mandatory. Optional elements, dicts or lists are omitted. Manditories have a None value.

Q: How are paged calls/results handled?

A: A simple generator is implemented.

• To be clear, "Paging" is eBay's term for repeating a call while advancing a record offset to get all records.
• eBay documentation has the word "Page" in the return type of paging calls.
• Do NOT supply a record "offset" parameter when making a paging call.
• The "limit" parameter is repurposed to control how many records from the entire set you want.
• To get all possible records, don't supply a limit.
• eBay imposes a hard limit on some calls, typically 10,000 records. Use filters to help keep below the limit. Use try-except to handle going over.
• Avoid exhausting memory by making the call within a "for" loop.

Q: Can the browser pop-up be stopped?

A: Reusing the result of the browser pop-up is possible. After running your program, check your terminal/console or info level logger.

Q: Why is eBay giving an "Internal Error" or "Internal Server Error"?

A: Rapidly repeating an API call with the same parameter values can trigger this.

Q: Parallelism, is it safe to do treading or multiprocessing?

A: Yes, for treading. Multiprocessing is unknown, help wanted.

Q: How to optimize API calls?

A: Prioritized, do the first things first.

1. Cache results to avoid repeating calls with identical parameter values.
2. Some calls have filtering options; omit unneeded data.
3. When the call returns a list, make the call in a "for" loop.
4. Use threading to make calls in parallel but don't exhaust RAM.
5. Use multiprocessing. -- Multiprocessing support is a goal. -- A safe workaround is to concurrently run copies of your program and divide the work among each.
6. Reuse the API object.
7. Switch to a faster internet connection.
8. Switch to computer with faster cores.

Contributing

• Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
• Follow Uncle Bob's SOLID principles; see a text description & video tutorial.
• Note the error number guide documented in the Error class definition.
• Please make sure to update unit tests as appropriate.

Legal

• MIT licence.
• "Python" is a trademark of the Python Software Foundation.
• "eBay" is a trademark of eBay Inc.
• Official endorsement by eBay Inc is not claimed or implied.
• The origin of the oath code is eBay Oauth Python Client.