Hacking Amazon searches

December 8, 2005 3:27 PM

Amazon-fu. How do I get Amazon, a) to show e.g. 100 hits per page; b) show just author/title and not the other crap?

By default, Amazon displays 10 hits per page in a book search. You can increase that to 25 if you change the docid-ve&sz= parameter in the search result url. However, if you change it to more than 25, you still get 25 hits per page. In addition, I don't want to see user rating, other editions, jpg of cover, etc. Can I just get:

Franz Kafka: The Trial
James Joyce: Ulysses
etc. etc.

and nothing else.

Greasemonkey script? (though Greasemonkey scripts are having problem with Firefox 1.5)

Thanks.

posted by TheRaven to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

If the direct URL will only do 25 then that will be all that you can get. Now if you add in Amazon's web service calls, in particular ItemSearch you might be able to write a GM script that replaces the page content with what you want. Or you could write a standalone program to do the searching.
posted by mmascolino at 4:44 PM on December 8, 2005

I thought Amazon Light 4 might work but I guess not... You might be able to talk to them though about adding the feature.
posted by pwb503 at 5:53 PM on December 8, 2005

Have you tried emailing their webmaster to ask for help with this?
posted by caddis at 6:17 PM on December 8, 2005

Best answer: try
this interface
posted by shothotbot at 6:59 PM on December 8, 2005

shothotbot, that is totally awesome! Thanks for the link - I'd never have know that existed.
posted by Dr. Wu at 8:51 PM on December 8, 2005

Response by poster: Once again, you guys rock. Shothotbot, thanks a lot. That's great.
posted by TheRaven at 4:48 AM on December 9, 2005

Very slick shothotbot!
posted by caddis at 5:09 AM on December 9, 2005

Shothotbot, or anybody, a question about that interface: That sortable, category-switchable design (the window where the book titles load on search) ... how was that created? A lot of javascript, I know, but is there any CMS that offers that? Or was that built custom for that site? I've been looking for a similar interface for some projects. If any of you know.
posted by Alt F4 at 5:22 AM on December 9, 2005

Man, that's amazing. Many thanks, shothotbot!
posted by languagehat at 6:31 AM on December 9, 2005