NAME

Amazon::MWS - Perl interface to Amazon Marketplace Web Services

VERSION

0.150

DESCRIPTION

See Amazon::MWS::Client for the implementation of the low level Amazon MWS API.

For the high level methods provided by the Amazon::MWS::Uploader you are going to need to supply database storage.

Uploading products

Basically you take the products which need to be uploaded to Amazon and create Amazon::MWS::XML::Product objects from them:

use Amazon::MWS::XML::Product;
use Amazon::MWS::Uploader;
use Try::Tiny;

my @upload;

foreach my $product_object (@send_to_amazon) {
    my %prod = ....

    try {
        my $product = Amazon::MWS::XML::Product->new(%prod);
        push @upload, $product;
    } catch {
        warn "Failure with $prod{sku} : $_";
    };
 }

Now you create an Amazon::MWS::XML::Uploader object and do the actual upload.

my $uploader = Amazon::MWS::XML::Uploader->new(...);

try {
    $uploader->products(\@upload);
    $uploader->upload;
} catch {
    die "Uploader failure with: $_";
};

A product upload goes through the following steps:

product

Basic product data.

inventory

Product inventory count (required).

price

Product price (required).

image

Product images (required).

Please note that only http:// links are allowed. If you pass https:// links, they will be rejected by Amazon.

variants

Product variants (optional).

You are not by any means finished with the upload, see "Resume uploads".

Delete products

Deleting products is much more straightforward, but you have still to care of tracking the upload process, see again "Resume uploads".

my $uploader = Amazon::MWS::Uploader->new(...);
$uploader->delete_skus(@skus);

Resume uploads

This is necessary to check whether the upload has been processed by Amazon.

my $uploader = Amazon::MWS::XML::Uploader->new(...);
$uploader->resume;

The uploader also goes automatically through the steps for the product uploads.

MWS in practice

Product price

Every product uploaded needs a price of 0.01 or higher, otherwise you get the following error:

0.00 price (standard or sales) will not be accepted.
Please ensure that every SKU in your feed has a price at least equal to or greater than 0.01

Shipping costs

You need to configure the shipping costs in Amazon Seller Central, you can't pass them through MWS:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/shipping/dispatch.html

Stuck uploads

There is no guarantee that Amazon finishes your uploads at all. We had uploads stuck for at least a week.

Multiple marketplaces

You can use this module and the uploader for multiple Amazon marketplaces. Please make sure that you disable Amazon's synchronisation between marketplaces.

For marketplaces with a different currency you need to convert your price first.

The list of marketplaces can be found at:

http://docs.developer.amazonservices.com/en_US/dev_guide/DG_Endpoints.html

Throttling and Quota

With Amazon MWS you have to deal with Amazon throttling your uploads and imposing quotas.

Possible reasons:

Upload too often
Stuck uploads
Orders with orderlines

Throttle Reponse

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ErrorResponse xmlns="http://mws.amazonaws.com/doc/2009-01-01/">
  <Error>
  <Type></Type>
  <Code>RequestThrottled</Code>
  <Message>Request is throttled</Message>
</Error>
<RequestID>a7b39ee6-4f76-48ee-92f1-43bc54f693df</RequestID>
</ErrorResponse>

Quota Exceeded Error Response

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ErrorResponse xmlns="http://mws.amazonaws.com/doc/2009-01-01/">
  <Error>
    <Type></Type>
    <Code>QuotaExceeded</Code>
    <Message>You exceeded your quota of 80.0 requests per 1 hour for operation Feeds/2009-01-01/GetFeedSubmissionList.  Your quota will reset on Thu Dec 18 07:39:00 UTC 2014</Message>
  </Error>
  <RequestID>5115e00d-35a8-4589-8083-f0ef998f76ef</RequestID>
</ErrorResponse>

Upload Errors

Error 8572: Incorrect UPCs/EANs/...

error: You are using UPCs, EANs, ISBNs, ASINs, or JAN codes
that do not match the products you are trying to list. Using incorrect UPCs,
EANs, ISBNs, ASINs or JAN codes is prohibited and it can result in your ASIN
creation privileges being suspended or permanently removed.

This happened in our case with products having self assigned EAN codes, but with a well known manufacturer. Apparently Amazon knows about the EAN ranges for this manufacturer.

Error 18181

The format of the tracking number passed to Amazon was invalid, e.g. wrong number of characters.

Error 20013: Image file size

error: Image file size: 13972730 bytes exceeds the the maximum allowed file size: 10485760 bytes.

There is no point in using such big image files for Amazon.

Error 99001: "brand_name"

Brand is a required field for products.

Uploader Module

Amazon::MWS::Uploader is an upload agent for Amazon::MWS.

XML Modules

Generic Feed

Amazon::MWS::XML::GenericFeed

Feed

Amazon::MWS::XML::Feed

Product

Amazon::MWS::XML::Product

Address

Amazon::MWS::XML::Address

Order

Amazon::MWS::XML::Order

OrderlineItem

Amazon::MWS::XML::OrderlineItem

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

James Rinser (additional API methods).

AUTHORS

Paul Driver Phil Smith Marco Pessotto Stefan Hornburg (Racke)

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.