12-5 a.m.
I love programming from 12 a.m to 5 a.m. It's so quiet. It's dark. It's just me and my computer (and my son who's fussy and won't sleep for more than a couple hours tonight).
Okay, so I finally got around to playing with the Amazon XML/SOAP stuff (like it seems everyone else is doing this weekend. That or analyzing SOAP and REST stuff which was probably spurred by Amazon too).
Anyways, I just found this in the very sparse documentation:
The only difference is that XML/HTTP allows you to pass multiple keywords, while SOAP does not.
That's no very nice now is it? I'm playing with the SOAP stuff just because I wanted to try it - though the implementation is hidden from me which is both great and means that there isn't much to see here, so move along. This is my first time playing with Axis and it seems very easy to use. Amazon's SOAP stuff definitely isn't as robust as the XML stuff, which seems to have been around for a while. First of all, you don't need a developer token, it'll return results to you quite happily without one. Secondly, no multiple keywords... I'm still playing with the other options.
I question WHY Amazon decided to use JDK 1.4 since it's so flaky and no one is using it yet, but oh well. I installed it to play with this dev... I'll probably uninstall it after. Good thing my server's running a copy.
You can try out what I've done by using AOL Instant Messenger and sending a message to "AmazAgent". (Is it an AMAZing agent or an AMAZon agent? Nahhh... It's only that AmazonAgent was taken. )It'll return 10 responses to your search query. Just like BlogAgent I make no guarantees because the IM libraries I'm using are flaky as hell AND I haven't had any time to debug this yet. Think of it as just playing around publicly...
If it seems slow, I'm not sure why. That just seems to be the speed of the libraries... it's throwing a zillion debug statements too, which is most definitely the axis stuff. Someone know how to turn that stuff off?
Good night!
-Russ