My First Flex Application: Amazon Prime Search

I just returned from a business trip to the west coast. Yes, I have a day job, but I’m happy to report that I have started work on my first Flex application, a search application for Amazon. I think it will be a good mix of UI elements and web services.

I have been an Amazon Prime customer for a few years now. For $79/year, Amazon Prime gives me FREE two-day shipping on my orders. The problem is that not all of the items available on Amazon are eligible for Prime shipping.  In addition, Amazon’s search does not let your filter based on whether an item is eligible for Prime shipping.

Therefore, I would like to create a Flex application that will allow me to search for any item available in Amazon, but filter the results to show only those items that are eligible for the benefits of Amazon Prime.

I will be using Amazon Associates Web Service, formerly named the Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) to search Amazon product data. Amazon Associates Web Service allows you to search by numerous attributes, including keywords, phrases, brand, price, category and more. The challenge will be that Amazon does not expose Amazon Prime as an attribute. I’m not sure how I will overcome that, but that will be part of the fun.

What do you think, is this application too ambitious for my first?

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