Ebay_Shopping Plugin
===================

The ebay_shopping plugin is a RubyonRails library for Ebay's Shopping API (http://developer.ebay.com/products/shopping/). 
Unlike the trading API (http://developer.ebay.com/products/trading/), the shopping API is only for retrieval of information, not
for posting items, or bidding on them. 

If you need that sort of thing, check out Cody Fauser's gem for the trading API (http://code.google.com/p/ebay/). If you don't, 
the Shopping API is simpler, leaner, and quite a bit faster too.

Ebay_Shopping was developed by Chris Taggart for Autopendium :: Stuff about old cars (http://autopendium.com), a classic car 
community site. It's still in development, and news of updates will be posted at http://pushrod.wordpress.com

Installation
============

To install, simply run the usual: script/plugin install http://ebay-shopping.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ ebay_shopping

Then from the root of your rails app run ruby vendor/plugins/ebay_shopping/install.rb. 

This will copy a basic configuration file into your app's config directory. This is where
you put your ebay settings (Ebay Application id, affiliate info, etc).

Basic usage
===========

Then from your rails app, construct a new request ebay request:

request = EbayShopping::Request.new(:find_items, {:query_keywords => "chevrolet camaro"}) # use "ruby-ized" version of Ebay API calls and params

response = request.response

response.total_items # => 7081

items_for_sale = response.items

items_for_sale.first.title # => "Chevrolet Camaro"

items_for_sale.first.view_item_url_for_natural_search # => "http://cgi.ebay.com/Chevrolet-Camaro_W0QQitemZ290197239377QQcategoryZ6161QQcmdZViewItemQQ"

items_for_sale.first.gallery_url # => "http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/pict/290197239377.jpg"

items_for_sale.first.converted_current_price.to_s # => "$38000.00"

...etc

For more methods and more details see the test suite, the comments with the class and method definitions, or wait for me to write more stuff.