FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

How to migrate to the Amazon Product Advertising v5 API (from the old v4 API)

Amazon is deactivating access to their v4 API on March 9, 2020. Current API will be shut down and everyone who didn’t migrate will not have access any more to the API.

If you are using Amazomatic, this is recommended, because I will soon update the plugin to match the v5 API requirements, and if you haven’t migrated your API yet, the plugin will no longer work for you.

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.

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.

Good luck!

Official Amazon documentation on how to make the migration:

To migrate your existing Product Advertising API account from AWS

  1. Log into Associate Central website with email id of Primary owner of the store. Confirm you have selected correct store in top right drop down, else update it to correct store. On the Manage Your Credentials page, choose Migrate. We automatically create new credentials for you.

    Update your Product Advertising API applications with your new pair of credentials.

  2. After you migrate your account, on the Download credentials page, copy your Access Key and Secret Key or choose Download Credentials.

  3. You can use your new credentials to make requests to both Product Advertising API 4.0 and 5.0. Your old credentials will continue to work with Product Advertising API 4.0, but only with new credentials you’ll be able to call Product Advertising API 5.0 successfully.

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