Is it possible to get the eBay Category List via an API programmatically?

Question

My goal is to get a list of eBay categories programmatically.

It appears that the GetCategories method is only available from the Trading API. If I understand correctly, there is user interaction required to log into the Trading API: http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/XML/docs/HowTo/Tokens/GettingTokens.html

Is there another method to get the eBay categories list programmatically?

I'm using Drupal 7, so PHP.

Answer 1

You do not need a token to get the categories. All you need is your App-ID

The link below with your APP-ID will return the XML category listing from site: UK (siteid=3) Setting CategoryID=-1 starts the list at the root level, you can start from any category, just use IncludeSelector=ChildCategories to get children

http://open.api.ebay.com/Shopping?callname=GetCategoryInfo&appid=YOUR-APP-ID&siteid=3&CategoryID=-1&version=729&IncludeSelector=ChildCategories

Now just use SimpleXML or whatever to parse.

Answer 2

This may have been correct at the time, however this call in the API now only returns you one level of categories, not the entire hierarchy. To do it for a whole site, in one request (which can get quite large) you need to use the GetCategories call with a valid Ebay token, and specify <DetailLevel>ReturnAll</DetailLevel> and <ViewAllNodes>true</ViewAllNodes>.

Also note you will need to update these regularly and provide a mapping algorithm as Ebay expires and remaps categories to new names / ids over time.