ebay-rest 0.0.4

Wraps the eBay REST APIs.

ebay_rest

A tread-safe Python 3 pip package that conveniently wraps eBay’s REST APIs.

Installation

Use the package manager pip to install ebay_rest.

pip install ebay_rest    # Use pip3 if your computer happens to also have Python 2 installed.

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(sandbox=False)
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 item in api.buy_browse_search(q='iPhone', sort='price', limit=5):
            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 to make API calls faster?

A: Prioritized, do the first things first.

1. Reuse the API object.
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 future goal. -- A safe workaround is to concurrently run copies of your program and divide the work among each.
6. Switch to a faster internet connection.
7. Switch to computer with faster cores.

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 try and keep below the limit. Use try-except to handle going over.
• Avoid exhausting memory by making the call within a "for" loop.

Contributing

• Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
• Error handling. Make a debug logs for maintainers. Throw exceptions for end-user errors.
• 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 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 oath code was derived from this eBay Oauth Python Client.