Node.js library for the Amazon Web Services

by jenhsun • 15 years ago

27 8 15 years ago

This library is great (and it's been around a while). It even abstracts relatively easy tasks (like product search), making them ridiculously simple to execute.

jfarmer2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure what the common idioms for Javascript/node.js API design are, but I think this API is really ugly.

  prodAdv = aws.createProdAdvClient(yourAccessKeyId, yourSecretAccessKey, yourAssociateTag);

  prodAdv.call("ItemSearch", {SearchIndex: "Books", Keywords: "Javascript"}, function(result) {
    console.log(JSON.stringify(result));
  })

createProdAdvClient? Accessing the .call method directly?

Edit: Also, didn't notice, but the upper-case key names in the hash passed to the call method are also ugly, IMO.

jonknee• 15 years ago

The upper-case key names are from Amazon...

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-0...

As for the method name, what would you have chosen? It's a generic official name "Product Advertising API", not a lot of room there. I guess leaving off the create wouldn't heart, productAdvertisingClient() is pretty verbose, but productAdvClient() not so bad.

jfarmer2• 15 years ago

I would rather have something verbose that corresponds to the underlying API than something I have to guess or remember.

Is it createProdAdvClient, createProductAdvClient, createProdAdvertisingClient, createProdAdvertClient, etc.?

Completely arbitrary.

My ideal API clients have a base layer that maps intuitively to the underlying API, and a developer-friendly upper layer with idiomatic method calls.

A common trick in Ruby, for example, is to give the API client a proxy method (e.g., api) that uses method_missing to map method calls to API end points.

You wind up with API clients that look like client.api.some_method(...). Under the hood it might transform some_method into "someMethod" before it makes the API call.

However, if you want, you can still access the raw API endpoints programmatically.

Just my preference, I realize, but I think it's important for libraries to idiomatic.

PhrosTT• 15 years ago

Any plans for DynamoDB?

ntkachov• 15 years ago

My one issue with this mod (and most amazon mods for node) is that they don't include S3 support AND SimpleDb support. The node app I'm writing needs S3 and SimpleDB and thats it. But the only library that has that doesn't work with my system. Fortunately i found two separate mods that do what I need really well.

SaltwaterC• 15 years ago

Well, since you're complaining, I added SimpleDB support to aws2js. It was like 12 lines of code actually, but since people don't ask ...

rgbrgb• 15 years ago

On a related note, if you just want something tiny to interact with s3, check out Knox (https://github.com/LearnBoost/knox). I used it on a recent project and it was very easy with a clean API.

Node.js library for the Amazon Web Services

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