eBay Hacks

Submit an Auction Listing

Use AddItem to start new listings and make scheduling easier.

eBay’s Turbo Lister, introduced in [Hack #73], is an API-based tool used to submit new listings to eBay. It provides a complete interface with which the user can create and modify listings, as well as a database engine that stores them. (Factoid: 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',     [1]
              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";     [2]
    print "Ends $rsp->{Item}[0]{EndTime}\n";
}

The simplest way to use this script is to call it from the command line, like this:

additem.pl 7276 'Little Red Steam Shovel' 'My description...' 5.00

However, ...