New Amazon Product Advertising API is here and you need to migrate FAST!
Tags: productadvertisingapi, amazon, api
Published: 2019-09-11 17:14:36

---
title: New Amazon Product Advertising API is here and you need to migrate FAST!
published: true
description: Without much of a fanfare Amazon has rolled out new Product Advertising API version 5
tags: product-advertising-api, amazon, api
canonical_url: https://fbacatalog.com/blog/new-product-adveritising-api.html
---

_originally published on [fbacatalog.com/blog](https://fbacatalog.com/blog/new-product-adveritising-api.html)_


Without much of a fanfare Amazon has rolled out [new Product Advertising API version 5](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/). I've been really excited to hear about all the changes to API that Amazon neglected for quite some time.

I usually monitor [multitude of amazon support forms](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/forum.jspa?forumID=9&start=0) to have updates about things like these. But this time it's different - I found zero announcements at all in Google. But stumbled upon this news in an [open source library I'm following](https://github.com/hakanensari/vacuum/issues/77).

Before going into details on what was actually changed, I'd like to stress out a fact that **on 31 October current API will be shut down** and everyone who didn't migrate -- disconnected.

## Changes

- Deprecates everything related to Cart functionality
- Requests to API now need to be [signed differently](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/signature-version-4.html)
- Now API has become more secure with support of HTTPS POST/RPC(JSON)
- Response now is lighter and in JSON format (yaaay!)
- Faster response times  (double yaay!)
- Bunch of new data points like _price display in preferred currency, multilingual support, prime exclusive, free shipping eligibility, sales rank at browse node_
- There is also a [new scratchpad to play around with new API](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/scratchpad/index.html)

For all the nitty-gritty details, side-by-side request and response comparisons check out [their documentation](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/migration-guide/whats-new-in-paapi5.html).

This API ships with official support for Java, PHP, Python and JavaScript SDK's. Yeat, no Ruby support is in sight (starts crying...)

## First thing to do - migrate to new keys
Current users of Amazon Product Advertising API have their accounts linked with AWS. And first thing that Amazon wants all those people to do is to [decouple Associate account from AWS](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/migrating-your-product-advertising-api-account-from-your-aws-account.html).


Here is a fair warning:
    _When you migrate your Product Advertising API account from AWS, your old credentials stay valid for a period of 3 days. After the 3 days period, your old AWS credentials will stop working with Product Advertising API._

So, I recommend doing this immediately -- once you issue your new keys, you'll have 3 days to actually start using those. __New credentials work with API version 4 and 5, so this requires no code changes__.

## Moving to new API
As Amazon claims, it could take up to 4 weeks to update.

"We have found that it takes 3 or 4 weeks to make changes to a typical application to upgrade from PA API 4 to PA API 5. The time for testing and deployment depends on your individual installations."

Considering that there is not much in terms of heads-up from PA API team -- I recommend to start moving now.

If you depended on any function related to Cart, you should be completely abandoning that solution in a favor of [Cart Form](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/add-to-cart-form.html). This is actually first step of migration that I did months ago and experience has been fantastic -- it actually reduced maintenance burden, complexity of such an important action has went down (in other words, _it just works_).

Onle after that you can integrate to PA-API 5.0. If your not using any of [officially supported SDK's](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/with-sdk.html) your best bet is to have a sneak peak at [their Java code](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/without-sdk.html) and roll with your own implementation.

Good luck!

## Final note
Judging purely by documentation - most of these improvements have been expected by many. A lot of quirky parts of PA API 4 have been removed or significantly improved. Especially moving to JSON and HTTPS POST/RPC(JSON) is a much welcomed change.

But communication wise there is much to be desired:

- Some proper heads-up on a change would be beneficial for everyone -- forums, associate account or anything... Please!
- [Documentation had only one revision](https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/document-history.html) and never updated afterwords

I really hope that Amazon will move that deadline for PA API v4 deprecation. Seems like everyone I asked is not even aware of this change, everyone is as surprised as I am.