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Remix API Documentation
Welcome to the Remix developer portal. Remix is an API that gives you access to BestBuy.com's product catalog data and more. What you do with it is up to you.
This is the general introduction to the Remix API. Specific information resides in the URL tutorial and the type sections: Products, Stores and Store Availability
Topics covered:
Intended Audience
Documentation and Use Approach
What is an API?
What is Best Buy's goal in offering an open API?
Technical Information about the Best Buy Remix API
Working with APIs: Steps and Guides
Terms of Service
Intended Audience
This API documentation is intended for individuals familiar with the basics of API development and a basic knowledge and understanding of key terms and concepts.
The documentation works for both those who are experienced in API development and those new to it.
For those who would like greater detail in these areas, please see our Starter Kit (coming soon).
Documentation and Suggested Use Approach
This is a conceptual document, offering information on the concepts related to APIs and to working with the Remix API.
For those who want more concrete information, we offer links to that in other areas of the website.
The Remix API is built to guide you through usage. The documentation is meant to complement that.
Read this document, review the examples or ignore them and dive in and play around. We'll provide a few interesting URLs to get you started. When you need it, review the detailed information and example by following the links.
If you find the concrete examples make you hungry for more, check out our Starter Kit (coming soon). It offers greater foundational detail such as what knowledge, skills and technology are necessary to develop APIs.
What is an API?
- The term API stands for Application Programming Interface.
- The phrase refers to sets of technologies that enable websites to interact with each other.
- These technologies can function as building blocks for developers who want to build applications to access data or services from one website and display or use on another. Once built, these applications may run on other websites or desktops.
- These applications are often referred to as widgets.
With the Best Buy Remix Open API, we offer developers the ability to access these building blocks and ultimately the data the developer wants to display or use in her web application.
What is Best Buy's goal in offering an open API?
Right now, the goal of the Remix API is to provide direct, high-level access to the data contained in the Best Buy product catalog.
As a third-party developer, you decide how you want to use and display the data by virtue of how you design your web application that will access the data via the API. Please also see our Terms of Service.
We're liberating our product catalog data to allow anyone to display it in a way and location right for them.
Like a musical remix, the application you build with our API results in an alternative version of the data song, a new master recording after you've added, subtracted or changed elements to compose a new version.
We're interested in what you build, and offer samples of what developers are building on our Widgets page. Let us know what you build by posting an item in the forum
For those of you who want to combine artistry with income, we offer an Affiliate program in which you get a percentage of revenue realized when your application drives an individual to our site and buys a Best Buy product.
Technical Information
This section will describe technical information about the Remix API so you understand the building blocks at your disposal.
Specific URL and component information resides in the URL tutorial and the type sections: Products, Stores and Store Availability.
If you are new to working with APIs or want a refresher, please use our Starter Kit (coming soon). It provides information about the basic knowledge, skills and technology you need to work with APIs. Taking a recipe-like approach, we guide you through the necessary ingredients and then provide steps to use put them all together to arrive at a good foundation to start developing APIs.
The API is accessible by HTTP GET, so any of the following methods will work:
- Access from a browser
- Use of a language-specific HTTP API (such as Ruby's net/http)
- Use of a command-line HTTP client tool like curl or wget
The Remix API architectural design style is RESTful, meaning we follow REST principles. Strictly speaking, Representational State Transfer or REST refers to a collection of network architecture principles which specify how resources are defined and used. These are resources you can literally touch, such as servers, and those you can figuratively touch, such as data formats. These REST principles are used for hypermedia systems such as the web. In the Remix context, the key piece of information you need to know is the looser definition of REST: the interface transmits data over HTTP without an additional messaging layer such as SOAP or session tracking via HTTP cookies.
We intend for the API to help you learn, as much as is possible. Error messages are built to minimize the amount of flipping back to the documentation you must do to get to the result you intend. We try to keep technical conventions straightforward and (hopefully) intuitive, so that as much as possible you can learn by using, and infer based on the principles you pick up.
Working with APIs: Steps and Guides
Are you new to working with API development?
Use our Starter Kit (coming soon) to gain the foundation of knowledge, skills and tools you need to work with APIs.
After taking you on a tour of what you need, the Starter Kit then guides you through the steps to bring it all together to begin API development.
Are you an experienced API developer?
Here are the basic steps to follow:
- Register for an account
- Register your application. This provides you a key which uniquely identifies you and allows you to access the Remix API. You'll use the key later on when you're constructing the URL string that will query our database.
- Browse the Types documentation. This describes the types of information currently accessible from the Remix API and the associated queries, use and results:
Stores
Products
Store Availability - Construct your URL. See the Remix URL Tutorial
- Make your API call. The call will provide information about who you are and let us know what you want to know.
For example: - /v1/products/8880044.xml?apiKey=<YourApiKey>
- /v1/products(manufacturer='canon')?apiKey=<YourApiKey>
- /v1/stores(area(94103,10))+products(manufacturer=nikon)?apiKey=<YourApiKey>
- /v1/categories(id in(cat00000,abcat0100000))?apiKey=<YourApiKey>
- Once you get the XML result set back, have your XML or JSON parser grab the data coming back, parse out the data you're interested in and then inject it into your program. You might loop through a list of product results and build up HTML output that shows the product name, image, and sale price. Or you might take the results of a store availability query and plot products and stores on a map.
- Contribute: join a discussion in the forum.
- When you're ready, let us know what you built by posting an item in the forum.
- Want the option of earning income from your creations? Sign up for the Affiliate program
This results in Get product with sku 8880044, as XML
This results in all products manufatured by Canon
This Join results in all stores within 10 miles of the 94103 zip code which carry nikon products, and a list of those products
Terms of Service
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