Yahoo Releases Shopping APIs

Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday released application-programming interfaces for developers who want to search the portal's shopping database and display prices and other information for products on their web sites.

Besides search, the APIs can be used for merchant/price comparisons. The technology includes sample code and documentation, and covers millions of products and thousands of merchants in Yahoo's shopping database.

The APIs present results in extensible markup language (XML) and provide access through HTTP. Using the Product Search API, developers can search the Yahoo database by product names or other keyword, limit the search to a specific merchant, price range or product category; and filter merchants according to their Yahoo user ratings.

The Price Comparison Grid API gives developers access to products offered by multiple merchants, returning base price, tax and shipping information and total price.

Yahoo, as well as shopping competitors EBay Inc., Amazon.com and others, provides developers with APIs in order to build a wider network for their merchant customers and advertisers.

The Yahoo APIs are available through its Developer Network site.