Help

Product Advertising API: 2009-11-01

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Help

The Help operation provides information about Product Advertising API operations and response groups. For operations, Help lists required and optional request parameters, as well as default and optional response groups the operation can use. For response groups, Help lists the operations that can use the response group as well as the response tags returned by the response group in the XML response.

The Help operation is not often used in customer applications. It can, however, be used to help the developer in the following ways:

  • Provide contextual help in an interactive development environment (IDE) for developers

  • Automate documentation creation as part of a developer’s toolkit.

Availability

All locales.

Request Parameters

The following table describes the request parameters for Help. Parameter names are case sensitive.

Parameter Definition Req'd?
About

Specifies the operation or response group about which you want more information.

All Product Advertising API operations, all Product Advertising API response groups

No
HelpType

Specifies whether the help topic is an operation or response group. HelpType and About values must both be operations or response groups, not a mixture of the two.

Valid Values: Operation, ResponseGroup

No
ResponseGroup

Specifies the types of values to return. You can specify multiple response groups in one request by separating them with commas.

Default Value: Request | Help

Valid Values: No others

 No

Help also accepts the parameters that all operations can use. For more information, see, Common Request Parameters.

Response Tags

The following table describes the default response tags included in Help responses.

Element Tag Definition
AvailableParameters Optional request parameters an operation can use. See RequiredParameters.
AvailableResponseGroups Optional response groups an operation can use. See DefaultResponseGroup.
DefaultResponseGroup Response groups an operation uses by default. See .
Element Names of the elements used in the XML response. The elements are presented in an X-path, which reveals the hierarchical structure of the XML elements as defined in the WSDL.
Elements Container for one or more Element(s).
Name Name of the operation in the Help request.
Operation Name of Product Advertising API operation that can use the specified response group.
OperationInformation Container for the entire response when the HelpType is operation. Child tags include Name, RequiredParameters, AvailableParameters, DefaultResponseGroups, and AvailableResponseGroups.
RequiredParameters Request parameters that are required for an "operation."
ValidOperations Container for one or more Operation(s). Specifies the operations that can use the specified response group.

For more information about the parent elements of these tags, see the appropriate response group in Response Groups.

Sample Requests

The following request provides information about the operation, ItemLookup. In the request, HelpType must be set to “Operation” because the About value is an operation. 

http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?
Service=AWSECommerceService&
AWSAccessKeyId=[AWS Access Key ID]&
Operation=Help&
HelpType=Operation&
About=ItemLookup

The response to this request is shown in, Response to Sample Request.

The following request provides information about the Large response group. In the request, HelpType must be set to “ResponseGroup” because the About value is a response group. 

http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?
Service=AWSECommerceService&
AWSAccessKeyId=[AWS Access Key ID]&
Operation=Help&
HelpType=ResponseGroup&
About=Large

Response to Sample Request

The following XML is a snippet of the full response to the first sample request. 

<ResponseGroupInformation> 
<Name>Large</Name> 
  <CreationDate>2005-07-26</CreationDate> 
  <ValidOperations> 
  <Operation>ItemLookup</Operation> 
  <Operation>ItemSearch</Operation> 
  <Operation>ListLookup</Operation> 
  <Operation>SimilarityLookup</Operation> 
</ValidOperations>
<Elements> 
  <Element>Accessories/Accessory/ASIN</Element> 
  <Element>Accessories/Accessory/Title</Element> 
  <Element>Arguments/Argument/Name</Element> 
  <Element>Arguments/Argument/Value</Element> 
  <Element>BrowseNode/Ancestors/BrowseNode/BrowseNodeId</Element> 
  <Element>BrowseNode/Ancestors/BrowseNode/Name</Element> 
  <Element>BrowseNode/BrowseNodeId</Element> 
  <Element>BrowseNode/Children/BrowseNode/BrowseNodeId</Element> 
  <Element>BrowseNode/Children/BrowseNode/Name</Element> 
  <Element>BrowseNode/Name</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/AverageRating</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/Review/ASIN</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/Review/Content</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/Review/CustomerId</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/Review/Date</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/Review/HelpfulVotes</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/Review/Rating</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/Review/Summary</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/Review/TotalVotes</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/TotalReviewPages</Element> 
  <Element>CustomerReviews/TotalReviews</Element> 
  <Element>EditorialReviews/EditorialReview/Content</Element> 
  <Element>EditorialReviews/EditorialReview/Source</Element> 
  <Element>Errors/Error/Code</Element> 
  <Element>Errors/Error/Message</Element>

Notice that Help displays the XML response elements in an X-path format. This presentation is helpful in understanding the hierarchy of response elements.

Related Operations

None

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