ebay_rest

A Python 3 pip package that wraps eBay’s REST APIs.

Installation

Use the package manager pip to install ebay_rest.

pip install ebay_rest    # Use pip3 if your computer also has Python 2 installed.

If you are one of the few people who want ebay_rest to get user tokens, do the following.

Install Chrome.

pip install selenium    # Use pip3 if your computer also has Python 2 installed.

Install Webdriver, aka Chromedriver, for your version of Chrome .

Here is a method for installing Webdriver/Chromedriver on macOS and tweaking security to permit it.

Install HomeBrew

brew install chromedriver

cd /usr/local/Caskroom/chromedriver

cd to the subdirectory that matches your Chrome version, e.g., 91.0.4472.101

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine chromedriver

Setup

Follow the instructions here.

Usage

from ebay_rest import API, DateTime, Error, Reference

print(f"eBay's official date and time is {DateTime.to_string(DateTime.now())}.\n")

print("All valid eBay global id values, also known as site ids.")
print(Reference.get_global_id_values(), '\n')

try:
    api = API(application='production_1', user='production_1', header='US')
except Error as error:
    print(f'Error {error.number} is {error.reason}  {error.detail}.\n')
else:
    try:
        print("The five least expensive iPhone things now for sale on-eBay:")        
        for record in api.buy_browse_search(q='iPhone', sort='price', limit=5):
            if 'record' not in record:
                pass    # TODO Refer to non-records, they contain optimization information.
            else:
                item = record['record']
                print(f"item id: {item['item_id']} {item['item_web_url']}")
    except Error as error:
        print(f'Error {error.number} is {error.reason} {error.detail}.\n')
    else:
        pass

print("\nClass documentation:")
print(help(API))    # Over a hundred methods are available!
print(help(DateTime))
print(help(Error))
print(help(Reference))

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Question: How are API results organized?

Answer:

• Elemental information is stored in dates, integers, strings and other basic built-in types.
• Dictionaries contain related elements.
• Lists contain information organized repetitively; expect zero or more contents.
• Dicts and Lists may be nested.
• eBay classifies data as optional or mandatory. Optional elements, dicts or lists are omitted. Manditories have a None value.

Q: How are paged calls/results handled?

A: A simple generator is implemented.

• To be clear, "Paging" is eBay's term for repeating a call while advancing a record offset to get all records.
• eBay documentation has the word "Page" in the return type of paging calls.
• Do NOT supply a record "offset" parameter when making a paging call.
• The "limit" parameter is repurposed to control how many records from the entire set you want.
• To get all possible records, don't supply a limit.
• eBay imposes a hard limit on some calls, typically 10,000 records. Use filters to help keep below the limit. Use try-except to handle going over.
• Avoid exhausting memory by making the call within a "for" loop.

Q: What should I do when the browser pop-up happens?

A: Watch and be ready to act.

• At the beginning, you may see a captcha; you need to complete it within 30-seconds.
• Near the end, you may see a 2FA (two-factor authentication) prompt; you need to complete it within 30-seconds.
• Otherwise, be patient, give the whole thing up to 2-minutes to complete, the pop-up will close automatically.

Q: Can the browser pop-up be stopped?

A: Reusing the result of the browser pop-up is possible. After running your program, check your terminal/console or info level logger.

Headless operation is in the works; contributions are welcome.

Q: Why is eBay giving an "Internal Error" or "Internal Server Error"?

A: Rapidly repeating an API call with the same parameter values can trigger this.

Q: Parallelism, is it safe to do treading or multiprocessing?

A: Yes, for treading. Multiprocessing is unknown, help wanted.

Q: How to optimize API calls?

A: Prioritized, do the first things first.

1. Cache results to avoid repeating calls with identical parameter values.
2. Some calls have filtering options; omit unneeded data.
3. When the call returns a list, make the call in a "for" loop.
4. Use threading to make calls in parallel but don't exhaust RAM.
5. Use multiprocessing. -- Multiprocessing support is a goal. -- A safe workaround is to concurrently run copies of your program and divide the work among each.
6. Reuse the API object.
7. Switch to a faster internet connection.
8. Switch to computer with faster cores.

Q: How to get data from a response header?

A: It is not currently possible; it is an open issue. Workarounds:

1. In some cases, another call can get the information; a demonstration is in the unit tests, search for test_sell_feed_create_inventory_task and task_id_new.
2. You could fork this library, and hack the call you need, so that it returns that needed data.
3. You could write code from scratch to make the RestFul call.

Q: How to upload a file?

A: It is not currently possible; it is an open issue. Workarounds:

1. In some cases, another call can be made for each record instead of doing a bulk upload.
2. You could fork this library, and hack the call you need, to force-feed it to your file location.
3. You could write code from scratch to make the RestFul call.

Contributing

• Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
• Note the error number guide documented in the Error class definition.
• Please make sure to update unit tests as appropriate.
• Release Steps
  1. in the root directory of the project, run CLI commands
     1. brew update && brew upgrade && brew cleanup
     2. python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
     3. python3 -m pip install --upgrade -r requirements_dev.txt
     4. pipreqs --print src
  2. edit the setup.cfg file
     1. update the section install_requires per the output from pipregs
     2. advance the version number
  3. repeat until error-free
     1. run /ebay_rest/scripts/generate_code.py
     2. run /test/ebay_rest.py
     3. resolve any errors but don't directly edit the code generated by generate_code.py
  4. in the root directory of the project, run CLI commands
     1. python3 -m build
     2. python3 -m twine upload dist/*0.0.XX*
        1. in place of 0.0.xx put the new version number
        2. username: __token__
        3. password: your token

Legal

• MIT licence.
• "Python" is a trademark of the Python Software Foundation.
• "eBay" is a trademark of eBay Inc.
• Official endorsement by eBay Inc is not claimed or implied.
• The origin of the oath code is eBay Oauth Python Client.