eBay Hacks, 2nd Edition

Retrieve Details About a Listing

Use the GetItem API call to get listing details.

The GetItem API call is used to retrieve all the details of a listing, including the title, description, starting price, category, and about 180 other individual bits of information.

Here’s a simple script that, when provided with the item number, returns the title, seller ID, amount of time left, number of bids, and the current price:

	#!/usr/bin/perl
	require 'ebay.pl';

	$item_id = shift @ARGV or die "Usage: $0 itemnumber";

	my $rsp = call_api({ Verb => 'GetItem', 
						DetailLevel => 0, 
								Id => $item_id 
	});

	if ($rsp->{Errors}) { 
	 print_error($rsp) 
	} else { 
	   my %i = %{$rsp->{Item}[0]}; 
	my ($price, $currency, $bids, $time_left, $seller, $title) = 
	  @i{qw/CurrentPrice CurrencyId BidCount TimeLeft Seller Title/};

 $d = $time_left->{Days}; $h = $time_left->{Hours}; $m = $time_left->{Minutes}; $s = $time_left->{Seconds}; $seller_id = $seller->{User}{UserId}; $seller_fb = $seller->{User}{Feedback}{Score}; print "Item #$item_id: $title\n"; print "For sale by $seller_id ($seller_fb)\n"; print "Currently at $currency$price, $bids bids\n"; if ($d > 0) { print "$d days, $h hours left.\n"; } elsif ($h > 0) { print "$h hours, $m minutes ...