Say Good bye to File Exchange - Find of I guess....

[scooterdogfl]

I get this nice message from Ebay saying File Exchange will no longer be supported after June 15, 2021.

"If you do not complete these steps, any scripts or programs you have that use File Exchange will not work after June 15. "

 Please please don't tell me the several thousand lines of code I use to upload my listings is  not just some alien gibberish after June 15? I hope that it's just a slightly different API and I don't have to invest to many hours of my time to rewrite some of the interface.

 I'm not a professional programmer. I just want to sell some gaming cards. So does anyone know how hard this will be? It can't be harder than the SQL queries I have to write that join 8 tables with a subquery. My head hurts enough just dealing with mySQL and VBA. Now I'm trying to learn Python and Ebay throws this at me. LOL. 

 This whole thing sounds so ominous. This last line in the Ebay message gave me a brown stain in my undies.

🤥

"Completing this transition will require registering as an eBay developer and may take some time. We recommend that you start as soon as possible to avoid losing any functionality. "

So I may lose functionality!! OMG I know I'm getting some grey hair but dang everything has been working so far. Oh the shame. Please let me keep my functionality a little longer.

😞

[shipscript]

Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with sellers who upload their CSV files to File Exchange. That interface will continue as before.  So if you can create a CSV file, it will still be a simple process to upload that file through eBay's webform.

This new mandate would only be addressing programmatic uploads from a personal server to eBay servers.  I was not aware these recent changes were going to affect File Exchange users who upload XML files, but should not have been surprised. 

Registering as a "developer" is not that difficult, and if you are not presenting your applications to the public, you won't need to go through certain pre-publication vetting, particularly if your API access does not exceed specified daily limits. The vetting is the delay that could affect uploads.

What is not clear from your message is whether you will be uploading to the same server endpoint with the same data structure, or whether eBay expects migration to a different API. What I do know is that eBay is adding more front end handshaking to legacy tools for authorizations.  So perhaps worst case is some front-end addition.

But I am right there with you in this dilemma since my tools make millions of calls to eBay's APIs.  I have been in eBay's developer program for over a decade and have been getting similar messages this year that, I believe, are associated with some extra handshaking that will be required for programmatic interfaces. But the messages are geek to me.

As a "dabbler" in eBay code, I have no clue what they are asking and am considering retiring my online tools unless some eBay staff member can swoop in and provide some sample codes for the transition.  @Anonymous 

Over a year ago, there was some noise that sample interface codes would be made available for tools like eBay Partner Network, because it was understood that not all users of eBay's APIs are hardcore programmers.  However, I've not seen any PHP examples of what is expected for transitioning some of the legacy APIs. Instead I see command-line examples like Curl and Perl, or high-level languages like C++.

[scooterdogfl]

Ship Wrote

"Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with sellers who upload their CSV files to File Exchange. That interface will continue as before. So if you can create a CSV file, it will still be a simple process to upload that file through eBay's webform."

I'm not so sure. I'll include the whole email message and you tell me what it means. I read it as File Exchange in it's current form will no longer work after June 15.

Ship Wrote

"Registering as a "developer" is not that difficult"

I already had to call eBay support twice and I'm still not registered. I was registered a long time ago and never used it. I thought someone in there could help me get File Exchange to work. "NOT" It seemed kind of dead in there and nobody answered my question. I had to hire some gig type programmer on one of those gig sites for 20 bucks who fixed my code in 2 minutes. Anyways, I let my eBay developer account expire and now I get a message that I'm suspended. Haha, suspended for what? I never used the account. I just put in one post. I can't seem to use my eBay user account email either.

Ship Wrote

"What is not clear from your message is whether you will be uploading to the same server endpoint with the same data structure, or whether eBay expects migration to a different API"

According to the reading I've done so far. I need to upload to the Feed API. This is from eBay on differences between File Exchange and Feed API

"Current Users are using the following url to create the Authorization token:"

https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn&runame=F-FILEEXL51P1EHH6L899Q9B969GE134DK-FileUpload

"New users will be using the following (url would change depending on the environment, sandbox or Production):"

https://api.sandbox.ebay.com/identity/v1/oauth2/token

I currently connect something like this.

strServer = "https://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeUpload"
strUserAgent = """Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like 
                 Gecko) Chrome/53.0.2785.143 Safari/537.36"""
Set objHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")

For anyone interested. CreatObject("MSXLM2.0XMLHTTP") is the correct object to use. I use VBA to create the CSV file to Upload my listings. There is a newer object that is similar but will not work with file exchange. That is why I couldn't get file exchange to work originally. I believe this object mimics a browser? Can anyone tell me if I'm right about that?

Here is the whole email sent by eBay. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong but from I get from this is I'll have to use the feed API and change to OAuth Authentication(the Feed API accepts OAuth tokens)

We’re replacing File Exchange with updated tools that bring you improved performance and reliability. From June 15, 2021, the current File Exchange platform will no longer be supported. 

If you access File Exchange directly through File Exchange Center, please visit our Help page to learn what’s changing for you: 

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/seller-hub-reports?id=4096 

If you are currently integrated with File Exchange programmatically via HTTP, or through eBay’s POST or GET URL, please keep reading or forward this to your IT Admin.

In order to maintain your current functionality, you’ll need to switch to the Feed API

https://developer.ebay.com/api-docs/buy/feed/static/overview.html 

Please see the instruction guide below for detailed instructions on making this transition:
Instruction Guide: https://developer.ebay.com/api-docs/sell/static/file-exchange-migration-landing..html 

If you do not complete these steps, any scripts or programs you have that use File Exchange will not work after June 15. 

Completing this transition will require registering as an eBay developer and may take some time. We recommend that you start as soon as possible to avoid losing any functionality.

As always, thank you for selling on eBay,

Your eBay Team

And finally. Is there a way to fix the darn typo in my message title. I remember there used to be some kind
of edit button that I can't seem to find anymore. All the typing I do and I still can't type worth a darn.

[shipscript]

Thanks for providing those links and extra details.

As eBay's help page explains, the File Exchange web interface will be moved into Seller Hub. This will make it easier to locate the tool.  Seller Hub will have an upload feature for the File Exchange CSV file, just like there is now (they call it uploading a template).

It looks like there will be a change in only the endpoint for your existing file, as stated here:

"Important! The feed files used are the same, but the endpoints used for the programmatic File Exchange will be deprecated by June 2021."

But , and this is a big BUT, there will be the addition of an authorization (OAUTH) handshaking preceding each transaction. And this token must be refreshed after some time has elapsed.

This is where I would like to see a PHP example. Below points to "manually" acquiring tokens, but when we we are serving ourselves, we would want to programmatically get our own tokens as well:

The processes in this topic describe how to manually get OAuth tokens. To help with this process, eBay offers several client libraries that you can use to quickly implement the minting of OAuth tokens in your applications:

• OAuth client library for Android
• OAuth client library for C#
• OAuth client library for Java
• OAuth client library for Node.js
• OAuth client library for Python

[reed-sales]

Sad and confused...  eBay called me yesterday to ask me if I was aware of the changes...

I just bought an item from a vendor, opened excel, filled in 12 fields and ran a macro and voila I have listed a new item on eBay and also added to my POS inventory.  When that item sells, I can click another button and poof it's gone from the eBay site or relisted.  Anything that can be done on the eBay website, I can do without leaving my spreadsheet.

All this happened without me ever logging in to the eBay site with my web browser.  Will I still be able to do this by changing my batch file and changing this, 

"

curl -k -o results.txt -F "token=AgAAAA**..." -F "file=@\\Location\Public\eBayRevise.csv" https://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeUpload

"

to something else?

[Anonymous]

Hi @shipscript - This is no small change, to be sure!  Some of the biggest reasons for it are to improve performance/reliability, security, and industry-set standards for public endpoints so that we help look after and protect your business for the long haul.

One of the larger changes is the update to O-Auth. That can be a bit tricky but  we have a section about how to integrate with it here:

https://developer.ebay.com/api-docs/static/oauth-tokens.html

As for us moving to RESTful endpoints, we’re hoping that our step-by-step guide is clear enough to help you with this transition. However, if you still need help please let us know by filing a ticket with the dev team!  Once you’ve registered yourself on developer.ebay.com, use the form on this page to get in touch with them. Thanks!

[maplin]

Cool! 18 years on eBay and I never knew this existed 😃 And then they deprecate it as soon as I find it 😋

Currently it's still working (I used bulksell.ebay.co.uk, and remove any #INFO line from upload file, but otherwise perfect) but assuming it'll stop in the coming months... what's the next simplest way to programmatically upload price/inventory feeds? https://developer.ebay.com/api-docs/sell/static/file-exchange-migration-landing.html just looks like a whole heap of work 😣