Using the Amazon Book Lookup Control

The Amazon Control API is as follows:
public ProductInfo lookupBook(String isbn)
This returns an XML Bean containing information about the book identified by the supplied ISBN.  If the control is unable to perform the operation it will throw a ControlException.  The next section describes how to navigate the ProductInfo XML Bean.



ProductInfo may contain an ErrorMsg.  If this element is present, the book lookup did not succeed, and the error message should be logged to the client.

If the book lookup succeeded, there will be a Details object that contains data about the book.  The meaning of the fields in the Details object should be clear from their names, however, some require comment.  "Asin" is the ISBN for the book.  ProductName is the title of the book.  The image URLs are absolute URLs to images on the Amazon servers of the cover of the book.

Amazon Terms and Conditions

Amazon has clearly defined terms and conditions governing the use of their web service apis.  The Amazon Book Lookup control does not enforce these terms, so it is up to you, the user of the control, to ensure that the terms are met.