ItemSearch returns available and unavailable items. Unavailable items are, for example, items that are temporarily out of stock. By setting the Availability parameter to "Available,” ItemSearch can filter out most of the items that are unavailable. The following ItemSearch request returns shirts that are available.

http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?
Service=AWSECommerceService&
AWSAccessKeyId=[AWS Access Key ID]&
Operation=ItemSearch&
MerchantId=All&
Condition=All&
Availability=Available&
SearchIndex=Apparel&
Keywords=Shirt

"Available" is the only valid value for the parameter. Setting it to any other value returns an error message. By default, the value is not set.

Items that are “available” are classified on Amazon’s retail web site as:

The availability of an item can change rapidly. There is typically a discrepancy between an item’s availability as reported by ItemSearch and the item’s true availability, as reported by Amazon’s web site. For this reason, the availability of items reported by ItemSearch and by Amazon’s web site can be slightly different. These differences are most evident for items, such as software, whose availability changes often.

Note

Do not confuse the Availability parameter with the return element, Availability. The latter is an element in a response that describes how soon an item can be shipped, such as, "Ships in 48 hours." While this is a helpful value to display, it does not guarantee that an item is truly available to be purchased. For that determination, test for an OfferListingId, which is provided by the Offers, OfferFull, and Large response groups.