How can I get a list of my active items?

As a seller on eBay, how do I track and monitor my active items?

Summary

Before deciding which API to use, you want to really understand your inventory and read the overview for each API call to see which you want to use.  A few key questions to ask yourself are:

1.  How many items have I sold?

2.  Am I a power seller?

3.  Am I currently using LMS?

4.  What information do I need returned from the API response?

If you are currently using LMS, and you just need basic information to be returned, the ActiveInventoryReport may be best for you.  If you are a power seller and have hundreds of thousands of items, you will want to use GetSellerList for it is a much more complex and flexible call and will give you back the most information.  If you are a smaller seller and just need to make a simple call to return very basic information about your items for sale, GetMyeBaySelling is recommended.  Below is some more detail and example of how to use each. 

1. Use GetMyeBaySelling: ActiveList
The GetMyeBaySelling API returns to you a 'view' of your selling information , similar to what you see on MyeBay. You can choose to return only the 'ActiveList' for your active items, or also return your SoldList, ScheduledList, and/or UnsoldList. Use this call if you can handle retrieving data in intervals every 30 minutes, or if your active item count averages less than 500 items. Request only the information that you need, for example, only the 'lists' that you actually need. Below is a sample XML Request for returning a seller's ActiveList only, with a pagination of 50 items per page. By default, up to 200 entries are returned per page.

 NOTE. Please note that GetMyeBaySelling has a limitation that it does not return more than 25000 items. If the number of items is more than 25000, you need to use GetSellerList.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<GetMyeBaySellingRequest xmlns="urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents">
<RequesterCredentials>
<eBayAuthToken>x</eBayAuthToken>
</RequesterCredentials>
<ActiveList>
<Sort>TimeLeft</Sort>
<Pagination>
<EntriesPerPage>50</EntriesPerPage>
<PageNumber>1</PageNumber>
</Pagination>
</ActiveList>
</GetMyeBaySellingRequest>

Request/Response Template: http://developer.ebay.com/Devzone/XML/docs/Reference/ebay/GetMyeBaySelling.html

2. Use GetSellerList

Detailed information is available in this article:

http://developer.ebay.com/devzone/guides/ebayfeatures/Development/Items-Retrieving.html#BrowsingaSellersItems

GetSellerList returns a list of all items for a given eBay Seller UserID. This call is recommended when dealing with large powersellers, and when applications want frequent updates to their current items. An example XML Request for GetSellerList is shown below. Specify the current time as the EndTimeFrom, and a date greater than 3 months in the future, as the EndTimeTo, to assure you receive Active items only.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<GetSellerListRequest xmlns="urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents">
<DetailLevel>ReturnAll</DetailLevel>
<UserID xsi:nil="true" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"/>
<EndTimeFrom>2013-07-15T23:13:56.000Z</EndTimeFrom>
<EndTimeTo>2013-10-15T23:13:56.000Z</EndTimeTo>
<Pagination>
<EntriesPerPage>200</EntriesPerPage>
</Pagination>
<RequesterCredentials>
<eBayAuthToken>x</eBayAuthToken>
</RequesterCredentials>
</GetSellerListRequest>

3.  Use ActiveInventoryReport via LMS

You may only want to go this route if you currently are using LMS.  If not you will have to modify your application to deal with the upload and download of files and you need to integrate your application with LMS.  Feel free to review LMS, https://www.x.com/developers/ebay/products/large-merchant-services.

Here are a few articles that may be useful:

https://ebaydts.com/eBayKBDetails?KBid=1456

https://ebaydts.com/eBayKBDetails?KBid=1342

Additional Resources

GetSellerList: http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/XML/docs/Reference/eBay/GetSellerList.html

ActiveInventoryReport: http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/merchant-data/CallRef/ActiveInventoryReport.html

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