[Koha] Fwd: [CODE4LIB] Amazon product API will require a crypto signature

[Joe Atzberger]

Koha has long been a consumer of Amazon API data and jacket images.  The API
has changed previously and Koha has had to keep up.  It looks like Amazon
has another set of changes in the works, set to take effect in a few months,
so we will have to adapt again.

Separately, it is speculated that it might become more difficult to get API
keys under the upcoming model, but this has not been confirmed.  Koha
developers will be following the API migration closely.

I'm forwarding a message from Jonathan Rochkind of code4lib that describes
the upcoming changes.

-- 
Joe Atzberger
LibLime - Open Source Library Solutions

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind at jhu.edu>
Date: Mon, May 11, 2009 at 9:40 AM
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Amazon product API will require a crypto signature

The Amazon products API keeps changing it's name, and has just been changed
to Amazon "Product Advertising API" -- it's the one you use to look up books
in Amazon and get metadata for them, though.

It looks from an email I got from Amazon that as of August 15th, you'll need
to cryptographically sign requests to this API, to have them responded to.
It looks like kind of a pain.

I think a bunch of people on this list may be using this API. Beware.
Instructions for how to cryptographically sign requests the way they want
can be found here:

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/Query_QueryAuth.html
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/rest-signature.html

Like I said, it's looking like a pain to me. There are lots of details to
get right. If you URI-escape not _exactly_ the same way they do, it's not
going to work. Etc.

Jonathan
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