eBay Hacks, 2nd Edition

Submit an Auction Listing

Use AddItem to start new listings and make scheduling easier.

eBay’s Turbo Lister [Hack #93] is an API-based tool used to submit new listings to eBay. It provides a complete interface with which you can create and modify listings, as well as a database engine that stores them.

Tip

35% of eBay listings are reportedly submitted with the API, including those uploaded with Turbo Lister.

All the work is done by the AddItem API call, illustrated by this extremely simple script:

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

	$category = shift @ARGV;
	$title = shift @ARGV;
	$description = shift @ARGV;
	$minimum_bid = shift @ARGV;
	defined($minimum_bid)
			or die "Usage: $0 category title description minimumbid";
    $country = 'us';
	$location = 'My home town';
	$duration = 7;
	$quantity = 1;
	$currency = 1;

	 my $rsp = call_api({ Verb => 'AddItem', 
				   DetailLevel => 0,	
					    SiteId => $site_id, 
					  Category => $category, 
      CheckoutDetailsSpecified => 0,

					   Country => $country,
                      Currency => $currency,
                   Description => $description,
                      Duration => $duration,
                      Location => $location,
                    MinimumBid => $minimum_bid,
                  PaymentOther => 1,
                      Quantity => $quantity,
                        Region => 0,
                         Title => $title
         });
		 if ($rsp->{Errors}) {
		    print_error($rsp) 
		} else {  
 print "New listing created: #$rsp->{Item}[0]{Id}\n"; print "Ends $rsp->{Item}[0]{EndTime}\n"; ...