How can I obtain the top 100 sales ranked items on Amazon programatically?

Question

I took a look through the API documentation and since the ItemSearch operation requires the Keywords parameter, I do not think it will be possible but I just want to confirm.

Should I be looking at a different operation?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I haven't found a means to obtain the top 100, but the TopSellers ResponseGroup can be used on the BrowseNodeLookup operation to return the top 10 items in a given BrowseNodeId. The BrowseNodeId identifies a product category.

If you are interested in a set of categories, retrieving the top 10 items from each category might be an acceptable compromise

Answer 2

Use an XML parser.

Amazon has the bestsellers feed at:

http://www.amazon.ca/rss/bestsellers/books/ref=pd%5Fts%5Frss%5Flink