I would like to synchronize our library management system (OLIB) with our Amazon's account in order to keep track of our bought eBooks. Is that even possible? The closest I've got is Amazon's Product Advertising API:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/detail/main.html
However it seems to work with Amazon's product list but there is no mention about how to access my account to manage my purchased Kindle eBooks.
Short answer, no. There's a slightly longer answer at a related question, https://stackoverflow.com/a/12905025/1251108.
In general Amazon does not seem interested in exposing customer purchase history.
Yes it is, but not officially. You can probably build something on top of the work I have done. So far I have exposed functionality for
listing bought content
listing personal documents (stuff you have emailed or Instapaper deliveries)
deleting items
You can find my code on GitHub - published just a few minutes ago :) Be aware that this works by emulating a browser, and as such will be very fragile to changes in the UI. But Amazon has not changed anything since I complained to them several years ago, so I would not worry too much ...
Related
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 2 years ago.
Improve this question
I've found today in my inbox an email from google where they announce that CWS payments API is deprecated
I'm working to create a Chrome extension that I want to release with the in-app payments support to let the user purchase a license to unlock full features. I was oriented to the CWS native payments API, but Google's decision to deprecate the API is a very bad news.
At the moment I've found a nice Wordpress plugin that will manage licensing, I'm thinking of using it to create a licenses backend but I'm not sure about it because it's mainly focused to be used for wordpress themes or plugins, so to implement it on client side for an extension would require some workarounds.
How do you will manage your in app purchases and licensing for Chrome extensions or Electron apps?
Alright, so as I am in the same situation as you are, I did a little bit of research. Here is a summary of my findings and comments on the matter.
There are three things to think about before you get started with the implementation:
The type of payment processing service you want to use;
The way you want to limit features for the free version (and for multiple tiers of plans);
The security of your users information through your extension.
Let's go through each of these one at a time.
1. Type of payment processing
There are two main types of service providers that will allow you to collect payments in you extension. Payment processing platforms are the first type: they allow you to process payments and will generate receipts, but they won't manage the different taxes and regulations of different countries. If you operate solely in one country, or in a few countries where taxes and regulations are the same, this won't affect you.
However, if you have users around the world, especially in Europe, implementing the rules to handle all of the different taxes and regulations can get really complicated and messy. But you have to do it, otherwise you put yourself in a situation where you are at risk of getting fined. That is where the second type comes in: the merchants of record. These are companies that will charge the users on your behalf, removing all of the complexities of taxes and regulations from your plate. They're essentially acting as a reseller of your products. Of course, they take a small cut from your revenue to pay for the weight that they're taking off your shoulders and putting onto their own.
Payment processing platforms will be cheaper (ex.: 2.9% + 0.30$ per transaction for Stripe), while merchant of records take a bigger cut (ex.: 5% + 0.50$ for Paddle). However, if you deal internationally, the 2.1% higher price is likely more advantageous for you, just because it saves you a lot of time and development work.
It's important to note however that merchant of records are unlikely to take on a brand new project, especially for Chrome extensions. That's because the amount of revenue those extensions generate on average is pretty low, and often not really worth it for them. Still, I suggest you hit up a few of them before deciding do go the classic payment processing way, just in case you can get in touch with a salesperson who sees potential in your project and is willing to take you on.
Here are a few merchant of records:
Cleverbridge
2Checkout (offers both MoR and basic payment processing services)
Paddle (does not support new Chrome extensions at the moment)
FastSpring (does not support Chrome extensions anymore, as of 2021)
Here are a few payment processing platforms:
Stripe
Paypal (from my experience, Paypal is a lot less developer friendly than Stripe)
2. Limiting features for free or tiered plans
The way features are limited for non-paying users will differ from one extension to the other.
If the features you want to limit in your extension already rely on a backend, to fetch or process data for example, it would make sense to implement the limitations on the server side. You would simply pass the user's ID, which could be stored in chrome.storage, to each request made to the backend. In addition to that, you could also disable the related elements on the client side, such as hiding or greying out buttons, tabs or fields, to make it clear to the user that those features are locked. You'll want to make sure the limitations are in place on the backend as well however, because otherwise a user could just inspect your extension and enable premium features without paying.
If your extension mostly or only operates on the client-side, then you will have to render the interface conditionally, based on the user's plan. The scripts or interfaces that will be added will most likely have to be returned by a backend, as pretty much anything that is done only on the client-side could potentially be inspected and exploited. In that case, any backend technologies or platforms you are most familiar with can probably be used to set things up.
Keep in mind that most of the payment processing and MoR listed above have APIs and guides on how to implement them securely in apps and websites. However, if you know Wordpress well and can set up a secure communication between your Wordpress and your extension, go ahead. If you want to use an online service like Zapier to link existing authentication and licensing services together, go ahead and do that!
There could be a lot more details in this section - there is a ton of material to cover, so I suggest you look for articles and tutorials online to help guide you in this process if you don't have much experience in the matter.
3. Security
This section won't be long, but it is very important one. No matter which payment processing platform you decide on or how you limit access to features in your extension, it is crucial that you make sure that your users information can never fall into the hands of another user. That includes reverse engineering and exploits of your system.
The more things you decide to handle yourself, the more risk there is, especially if you are not experienced. Keep that in mind when making your decision(s).
That's all for me. I hope that helps a bit!
I know it's probably a lot of information without any detailed "how-to", but without having in-depth knowledge of your product and situation, it is impossible to say what you should do exactly.
P.S.
If that can offer any guidance, here's what I will be doing for my own extension. Seeing as it's already very reliant on a PHP backend, I will add a few features to the backend in order to communicate with the Paddle API. So all of the limitations will be implemented on the backend, and I will add messages and visual indicators on the frontend to inform the free users of what they can and cannot do.
[Edit]
I just received a message from Paddle indicating that they do not support new Chrome extensions at the moment. Sorry for the misleading there.
[Edit: June 2021]
After an update earlier this year, FastSpring has updated their security standards, which makes it unusable within Chrome extensions. After I enquired, their support agents informed me that they do not support Chrome extensions anymore (and that it was only "accidentally" supported before).
First time post here, so forgive me for any bad etiquette/format.
I will preface by saying:
I have (over the last few months) been developing an iOS app for work. To be more specific, I am developing an inventory app to track bar inventory (liquor, beer, wine, etc). I can give more specifics on request if needed. I have most of the functionality done, only a couple more things I would like to implement. Eventually I will be porting it to Android as well.
At the moment, I have the model objects being archived to the local filesystem for saving and loading of data. However, my goal would be to database the model objects with the ability to display the information on a webpage. My logic is that no matter where the user is, he/she will be able to sign in to a service using a username and password, and view correctly formatted current/past inventories online. This is to allow the ability for a bartender to record the inventory, and have the bar manager view the inventory instances without having to have the physical device that recorded the inventory in his/her possession.
So here is my question:
Without being too general, what kind of service would I need to pull this off? I have a good amount of relevant front-end experience, specifically with iOS, Objective-C, HTML and CSS. However, I have ZERO experience on the back-end. I have researched around the internet, and I am aware of things such as cloud databases, web hosting and MySQL, etc. However, I cannot seem to find a definitive answer without asking my specific question. I suppose I would just like to be pointed in the right direction before investing money and time into a service that may prove useless to my cause.
Any resources and help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
There's not a definitive answer and you have a lot of options.
For me, the simplest is to set up a server with a database incorporated (mysql for example) and with a web service (written in PHP for example) that manages the database and queries on that.
Online you can find tons of guide on how to write a script in PHP that manages a database:
http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql/2
For the iOS part you can follow also this guide:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/create-your-own-web-service-for-an-ios-app-part-one/
Good luck!
Is there a way to get a user's achievements list from Xbox without dealing with screen scraping etc.?
How do sites like http://www.trueachievements.com do it? (they're definitely not screen scraping as they do not have my Live ID credentials...)
I know there's the Xbox LIVE Community Developer Program (XCDP) that provides some API but they do not provide achievements information as far as I can tell (links below)
http://duncanmackenzie.net/Blog/put-up-a-rest-api-for-xbox-gamertag-data
http://file-pasta.com/file/XML_Feeds.pdf
If you want this information you can check out my new site https://xboxapi.com.
Again if your profile is public then you can see friends, games and achievements. This has taken me over a year (on and off) to code and is now in public beta. To date it has served nearly 2,000 requests and growing. I am still working on optimising this script and it should only get better in time.
I currently have an API request limit setup for 120 requests per hour per IP.
Lets hope there are no major updates to xbox.com any time soon.
It says at the bottom of the TrueAchievements website that they are a member of the Xbox LIVE Community Developer Program. That leads me to believe that the XCDP does give information about achievements. Duncan Mackenzie's API for xbox worked for me for a little while, but then his web service seemed to go offline. Duncan also says that his web service will not be returning sadly. I can't get ahold of him to ask for release of his source code. I'm currently looking for another solution in retrieving the data. Unless I can get official access with XCDP, it looks like I'll have to do screen scraping. The screen scraping approach is not going to be pretty though. I'll let you know if I get any more information.
The current XCDP API does not give you any individual achievement information. At the moment the only way to get achievements is by page scraping and as of a couple months ago Microsoft has removed their non-JS log in form for xbox.com making it very difficult to log in. TA has found a way to get around this but he's trying to monopolize the scene and isn't willing to help others on this topic.
Even though TA does not have your LIVE credentials if your xbox.com page is public and if you give them your gamertag anyone can get your information by going to http://live.xbox.com/en-US/GameCenter?compareTo=GAMERTAGHERE
With the change the Microsoft has done they've also modified achievement icons. If you're looking at a friends profile and if you don't have the game or have unlocked the achievement the icon will be monochromatic even if it's unlocked by that person.
I'm looking for web applications that users can use without registration, just by visiting the site, and make you register later after you spent some time.
Any good examples?
Stack Overflow; question an answer sites.
Google News; blogs and newsfeeds.
Apple's iTunes Store, Amazon; anything where you have a shopping cart.
:-)
There's this site called StackOverflow.com
Sometimes when you are looking for example sites that you've seen in the past, it is just to increase your own confidence that you are doing it right. If you have a good idea of the advantages of this style of progressive registration, why not take a moment to write down & plan out how it should work for your site?
Edit content without registration (but create a pseudo-account using IP address):
wikipedia
Register with your email address, optionally password protect your account later:
http://www.instapaper.com/
Registration as a side effect of paying for a product
Amazon (if I remember correctly)
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
Say I had an open-source project which I wanted to try and generate some exposure for. Would it be considered unethical to set up a project entry for it on several sites such at github, sourceforge and google code, for example?
This would be purely for giving it greater exposure. I realise there might be some practical reasons for doing this, such as wanting to use github for source control, and sourceforge for issue tracking, forums and such. For the sake if this question I'm wanting to focus more on the case where you use one of the sites as the main site for the project, and make "stub" projects on the other sites that point back to the main site.
My gut feeling is that while it may not be outrightly unethical, it might be bordering on the sleezy side...
Stick with one provider. "If you build it, they will come" :)
Besides, once people do start coming, they'll just google the project name anyway. Finding the same project on Sourceforge, Github and Google Code is just going to annoy the hell out of people.
I don't know about the ethics, but consider the practicalities:
you will have to do multiple repeated
uploads to several different sites,
doing it to a single site can be a
pain
users won't know which site to report
bugs at
if you use the SVN/CVS/git
repositories, you will have multiple
copies of your code in different
repositories - a very bad idea
I'm sure there are other problems. So stick to one site - I've been using Google Code for a small project I've just started (CSVfix, if anyone is interesed) and I can recommend Google as being very easy to set up.
I think this is fine, for the reason that each provider may have something you want. You should pick the services that are best for your project. For example:
Google code has file hosting, but the issue management is terrible, so
Launchpad has great bug tracking, but no wiki, and we use Mercurial, so
Bitbucket.org has mercurial hosting etc..
So it might be reasonable to use Launchpad for bug tracking, and Google code for hosting files and wiki, and Bitbucket.org for hosting source.
I would suggest choose your preferred host for your project. You can publish about your project on many forums. Exposure will come via search engines.
I don't know why you think it would be unethical or sleezy. Maybe you can say more about that so people could address your concerns directly. To measure that, consider if you are intentionally breaking the rules of the service, lying to anyone about how you are using the service, and being deceptive in some other way. If you are using multiple services, I don't think you have anything to hide.
Consider the Perl community, which is the one I deal with. Several projects are hosted on one of the source control services, such as SourceForge, Google Code, or Github. The main distribution for most Perl stuff is CPAN, though. Other people may distribute through Freshmeat or some other service. The main issue tracker comes from Best Practical, which hosts a free RT for every Perl module on CPAN. Most of the people I know use the best from more than one service. Indeed, the Web 2.0 way is to create applications by cobbling together services from multiple vendors. :)
You should also think about the social construction of these free sites. Places like SourceForge and Github give out free accounts, but they also sell services. They get the buzz through the free stuff that allows them to sell the premium services. I don't see anything wrong with that. If you're using the free services, just realize that in return for your free use, they get to use you as free tester, advertiser, and so on. Again, I don't see anything wrong with that. It's just part of the deal. You aren't just taking from them, you are also giving to them. There's an exchange between consenting parties.
What would be unethical, I think, is any service that forbids you to use another service or intentionally sets up a situation which would make it hard for you to use another service by not being compatible with common tools or not giving you access to your data (e.g. somehow disallowing git-svn, and so on).
Services spanning these various hosts will be inconvenient and difficult to maintain. For the above mentioned reliance on search engines to generate traffic take care to chose a name that differentiates your project from the web noise. A clear indication that traffic will not arrive is if your project first gets a re-recommendation on spelling. Take for example the people who brought you the chattr project from GNU. Immediately chatr is suggested as the proper search and your traffic will suffer accordingly.
as i has already been said having to maintain the code on several hosts will make it more trouble then it is worth. What you have to think is you would need to make sure that it uploads properly over several hosts, it would more then likely cause confusion to some over if one copy is legit and the others aren't which in turn could cause a bad name for the project before you even start.
End of the day there are much more, better ways to spread the word of your project, social networking sites, specific related forums are two main ones for you to consider, either way you would be better off spending your time posting to several sites then you would uploading and maintaining code on several sites.
I consider having several (independent) mirrors to be a benefit for the community, because such distributedness assures more reliable accessibility of your public work, now and in future (it will survive the failure of any single hosting site).
That's why I want to keep track of the available diffeent options to publicly host open-source projects:
Which public hosting sites for darcs projects are there?
Which public Git hosting sites are there that are free software?
I believe it's rather ethical (or moral) to put some effort into ensuring that your public work is published in the most accessible way (well documented, and with some guarantees about it being accessible at any moment when someone is interested).
The effort for you to push your work to several places independently (I mean, they won't depend on each other) and manage all this is probably not really a nightmare (as suggested in some other answers here), especially with a DVCS. For example, one can even set up Git so that one pushes to several places with just one command.
I feel that unless you are forcing someone to read something done by you, but you are rather just putting your stuff somewhere for it to be findable and accessible if someone is interested, you are not egoistic or ego-whatever.