Amazon Hacks

Syndicate a List of Books with RSS

Someday all data will be available as RSS. Get a head start by syndicating Amazon search results.

RSS is an XML format that’s widely used to syndicate content. Depending on who you ask, it stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication and has become a standard way for publishers to make their content available. News Readers are programs that gather RSS feeds together and transform them into human-readable form. They’ve become a popular way to read news sites online.

With the wide audience for RSS data, just about everything is being turned into an RSS feed. This hack by Sean Nolan turns any AWS query result into an RSS feed.

What You Need

This hack uses ASP, which runs on Windows servers running IIS. The logic is straightforward, though, and could be translated to any scripting language.

The Code

Create a file called amazon_rss.asp and include the following code. Be sure to change the Const declarations to match your setup.

<%
'' AMAZON-RSS.ASP
'' Sean P. Nolan
'' http://www.yaywastaken.com/
''
'' This code is free for you to use as you see fit. Copy it, rewrite it, 
'' run it yourself, whatever. But no warranties or guarantees either. Who
'' knows what the hell it does. Not me, that's for sure!
''
'' Generates an RSS 0.91 feed from an Amazon book query
''
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
    Const MAX_PAGES_DEFAULT = 10
    Const DEV_TOKEN = "insert developer token"
    Const AFFILIATE_CODE = "insert associate ...