June 2005
Beginner
463 pages
14h 19m
English
Content preview from eBay Hacks, 2nd EditionBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Climb Out of the Sandbox
Deal with certification and go “live.”
eBay is understandably protective about any access it permits through its API. To that end, they provide the Sandbox, a “dummy” eBay site with which you can test your programs to your heart’s content.
The Sandbox is located at sandbox.ebay.com, and looks (and acts) just like eBay.com. Although it’s nearly fully functional (some features don’t work at all), its auction and user databases are completely separate from the main eBay site.
The idea is that you can create user accounts, list items, bid, and even check out, all without incurring the fees and API call limits that would otherwise prevent you from freely testing your application or scripts on the main site.
Although the Sandbox is not bug-free and is often a few months behind eBay.com when it comes to new features and interface changes, it’s stable where it counts. It’s accepted as fact that any code that works in the Sandbox will work on the live eBay.com site.
Certification
Before your application goes live, meaning that it can be used on what eBay calls the “production servers” (not just the Sandbox), you must complete certification.
Now, the fact that certification is a required step and costs money ($100 for Individual-tier developers) may make it seem more like a barrier than a service. However, eBay’s reasoning is that it ultimately benefits developers as much as it benefits eBay.
Tip
For developers working under the Individual license, the certification fee is ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.