When you need to connect to Amazon Web Services, NetBeans IDE gives you a nice start. You can drag and drop the "itemSearch" service into a Java source file and then various Amazon files are generated for you.
From there, you need to do a little bit of work because the request to Amazon needs to be signed before it can be used.
Here are some references and places that got me started:
http://associates-amazon.s3.amazonaws.com/signed-requests/helper/index.html
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSGettingStartedGuide/AWSCredentials.html
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/flex/advertising/api/sign-in.html
You definitely need to sign up to the Amazon Associates program and also register/create an Access Key ID, which will also get you a Secret Key, as well.
Here's a simple Main class that I created that hooks into the generated RestConnection/RestResponse code created by NetBeans IDE:
public static void main(String[] args) { try { String searchIndex = "Books"; String keywords = "Romeo and Juliet"; RestResponse result = AmazonAssociatesService.itemSearch(searchIndex, keywords); String dataAsString = result.getDataAsString(); int start = dataAsString.indexOf("<Author>")+8; int end = dataAsString.indexOf("</Author>"); System.out.println(dataAsString.substring(start,end)); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); }}
Then I deleted the generated properties file and the authenticator and changed the generated AmazonAssociatesService.java file to the following:
public class AmazonAssociatesService { private static void sleep(long millis) { try { Thread.sleep(millis); } catch (Throwable th) { } } public static RestResponse itemSearch(String searchIndex, String keywords) throws IOException { SignedRequestsHelper helper; RestConnection conn = null; Map queryMap = new HashMap(); queryMap.put("Service", "AWSECommerceService"); queryMap.put("AssociateTag", "myAssociateTag"); queryMap.put("AWSAccessKeyId", "myAccessKeyId"); queryMap.put("Operation", "ItemSearch"); queryMap.put("SearchIndex", searchIndex); queryMap.put("Keywords", keywords); try { helper = SignedRequestsHelper.getInstance( "ecs.amazonaws.com", "myAccessKeyId", "mySecretKey"); String sign = helper.sign(queryMap); conn = new RestConnection(sign); } catch (IllegalArgumentException | UnsupportedEncodingException | NoSuchAlgorithmException | InvalidKeyException ex) { } sleep(1000); return conn.get(null); }}
Finally, I copied this class into my application, which you can see is referred to above:
http://code.google.com/p/amazon-product-advertising-api-sample/source/browse/src/com/amazon/advertising/api/sample/SignedRequestsHelper.java
Here's the completed app, mostly generated via the drag/drop shown at the start, but slightly edited as shown above:
That's all, now everything works as you'd expect.
