Hello, grkn.
ScrapeAZon is a WordPress plugin, and is therefore only designed to work in WordPress. However, the plugin was developed by using the Amazon Product Advertising API, which is well documented on Amazon’s developer site.
I’m not particularly familiar with OpenCart, but there shouldn’t be anything standing in the way of an OpenCart developer similarly using the API to develop an OpenCart extension that performs that same function there as ScrapeAZon does within WordPress.
Thanks for your question. Let me know if I can be of further assistance.
James
Thread Starter
grkn
(@grkn)
In my case I wouldn’t need any actual Opencart integration, just a manual way to manually insert reviews into a standard webpage.
I could see this plugin being useful for that, could I just copy the code generated from the shortcode and use it on my site?
Hi, grkn.
Amazon’s Product Advertising API has checks in place to ensure that information that is delivered by the API is not cached on other sites for long periods. Therefore, an iframe containing Amazon reviews might work for a time if you copied and pasted the iframe code generated by the shortcode into another page. Then it would expire and you would no longer be able to see the reviews without generating a fresh iframe source from the plugin.
ScrapeAZon typically contacts the Product Advertising API each time the shortcode is processed, meaning the timestamp required by the API is always current unless the WordPress site or host is using a caching method that interferes with the timestamp.
Hope that helps!
James
Thread Starter
grkn
(@grkn)
Can you just make the shortcode process at a set interval to keep the iframe fresh? Iframes are not ideal in any case, but would it be possible to develop a “any website” version of this plugin using the Product Advertising API?
Thanks for the very thorough response!
Hi, grkn.
Alas, an iframe source is what the Amazon Product Advertising API returns to display customer reviews (other information can be retrieved from the API in non-iframe form). Indeed, iframes are not ideal. However, we’re stuck with them for now in this case. 🙂
WordPress shortcodes are processed when a page or post is loaded in a browser. If you were going with your copy and paste idea you would need to either manually reload, copy, and paste that fresh output into your OpenCart page or find a way to otherwise load the content of your WordPress page on your OpenCart page. By that time, it’s probably easier to circle back to someone developing an OpenCart extension that calls the Amazon Product Advertising API in a fashion similar to ScrapeAZon.
The ultimate answer to your last question is then “yes,” the Amazon Product Advertising API can be implemented in any number of ways not limited to WordPress and not limited to my plugin. Nothing is ever really one-size-fits-all, but an excellent example of constructing an Amazon API call that was helpful to me when I was researching development of this plugin can be found here:
http://randomdrake.com/2009/07/27/amazon-aws-api-rest-authentication-for-php-5/
Thanks again for your interest in ScrapeAZon!
James
