Hi,
I’m having trouble getting search results with Amazon’s General Item Search and was hoping someone could tell me where I might be going wrong.
It seems to have connected with Blockspring fine:
I’ve created an input and a repeating group:
And a text field:
But when I test it in preview mode it doesn’t return any results?
I’ve tried another Amazon Block and that seems to be fine. Is there something that I’m missing?
Thanks for the help.
Marco
Have you tried using the debugger?
Ok, just ran it, and it says that: ‘this input isn’t valid’…
Can you share a link to your page so that others can try?
Sure, here’s the link. Thanks
https://hemmingway.bubbleapps.io/version-test/add_a_book/sample:user?debug_mode=true
and does it work well in the Blockspring’s dashboard? Which word have you tested with?
Yeah, the results come through fine in the Blockspring dashboard and I’ve tried several random authors and book titles in the product keyword: umberto eco / harry potter
And are you sure all the parameters are correct? Right now you’re trying to run the block with this parameters:
{
“author”: “”,
“product_keyword”: “harry potter”,
“search_type”: “Books”,
“brand”: “”,
“response_group”: “”,
“manufacturer”: “”,
“min_price”: “”,
“max_price”: “”,
“min_percent_off”: “”,
“item_page”: “1”,
“region”: “US”
}
Do i need to fill in all of those parameters with the ‘input value’ for it to run? I don’t actually need all of those but didn’t have a choice in the menu and have only filled in the product keyword. Appologies if I’m missing something, this is the first time I’ve used Blockspring.
Well you should have the same settings as you have in the dashboard first, to test, and then you can try removing them. Each block is different, so I can’t really tell, but you should start with something that works 
Thanks. I tried that and even when I don’t touch the settings there are no results when I preview it.
I installed another Amazon block 'Amazon Item ID’s ’ and ran it both without altering the settings and then again with the input search and they both worked fine.
I have both blocks on the same page so i could compare in the debugger and the main difference is that the data source for the repeating group is ‘empty’ for the block that doesn’t work, even though it’s connected.
Any ideas?
There is an error on the blockspring side actually. When I try to run your request locally, it’s shows an issue in their code. it’s probably because one of the parameters isn’t of the format they expect.
Thanks a lot for checking it out. Who’s the best person to get in touch with over there?
I’d go to their slack community.
Will do, thanks.
Did you have any luck, Marco? I’m having the same issue with Amazon General Item Search. It works fine on the Blockspring dashboard, but I can’t get it to respond in the Bubble preview. I can get the search for Amazon IDs to work, but I need the product data and I’d rather not combine two API calls when I should be able to do one.
Hope you heard back from Blockspring!
Hey, I spoke to them on Monday but haven’t actually heard back since. I’ll email again and hopefully get an update soon. Will post in here when I hear back…
It seems like the issue is that Bubble is sending an empty string ("") to all possible params on this block.
If a parameter isnt used, best practice might be to send null or not to send at all?
Sorry for delay on support. We’re working on getting a better support process in place, getting choked up at moment.
Thanks for explaining Paul! Hopefully someone from Bubble can tell us how to stop sending empty strings? From a user perspective, we have no control in the Bubble forms for Blockspring. I’ve had issues with some other Blockspring integrations with Bubble, probably from the same empty strings.
I wonder if it might be easier to use the API connector instead of Blockspring ? That way you have control over what is being sent.
