How to Use the Rakuten Ichiba Item Search API — Automated Reselling Research with the Rakuten API

If you research for Rakuten point reselling but struggle to find good products — using a little IT skill can improve your Rakuten research dramatically. Looking at Rakuten Developers, you'll see there are many APIs. Among them, this article introduces how to use the "Rakuten Ichiba Item Search API," which is useful for Rakuten research.

Signing in to Rakuten Developers

Go to Rakuten Developers (https://webservice.rakuten.co.jp/) and sign in with your Rakuten member ID.

Issuing an application ID

Click "Issue application ID."

Fill in the required fields on the new application form.

① Application name: anything is fine as long as you can later tell what the app is for. ② Application URL: you enter the URL of the site where you'll use the Web API, but this can be anything too. ③ Open detailed information: skipped here, since we're only using search. ④ A survey, so skipped. ⑤ Authentication: enter the 5 digits displayed. ⑥ Click at the end!

This information is important when using the Rakuten API. You can see it any time by signing in to Rakuten Developers, so there's no need to take notes.

Testing it with the test form

Once you've obtained an application ID, let's see how it actually behaves. https://webservice.rakuten.co.jp/explorer/api/IchibaItem/Search/

The application ID is already filled in. If it isn't, enter the application ID you obtained. ① keyword: the keyword you want to search. Enter the brand or product name you want to research. ② genreId: enter the ID linked to the genre you want to search. How to look up genre IDs will be covered in a separate article; for now let's set "0", which targets all genres. ③ GET button: click it and the results are displayed. The URL field shows the request (URL) with parameters that actually calls the Rakuten API, so use it as a reference during development. Below the GET button you should see the results returned from the Rakuten API. Processing these by program is what makes automated research possible.

The various parameters for using the API are documented on the API detail page. https://webservice.rakuten.co.jp/api/ichibaitemsearch/ Let's look at the representative parameters (or rather, the ones I use).

How to build the API request URL

The rule for the request URL is as follows.

https://app.rakuten.co.jp/services/api/IchibaItem/Search/20170706?applicationId=[applicationId]?[parameter1]=[value1]&[parameter2]=[value2]…

Say you want to look for "LEGO" at "Toys R Us," with a minimum price of ¥100 and a maximum of ¥10,000, and you don't want results containing "used" or "lithium." You want to check the top 30 in ascending price order. In that case it looks like this.

https://app.rakuten.co.jp/services/api/IchibaItem/Search/20170706?format=json&keyword=LEGO&genreId=0&shopCode=toysrus&page=1&sort=-itemPrice&minPrice=100&maxPrice=100000&NGKeyword=中古 リチウム&applicationId=[applicationId]

Enter this request URL in your browser's address bar and you'll see values come back.

Building it into a program

I program in Python on AWS Lambda as my platform. Below is one example of the programming.

def lambda_handler(event, context):
  url = 'https://app.rakuten.co.jp/services/api/IchibaItem/Search/20170706'
  payload = {
    'applicationId': 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'
  }

if 'genreId' in event:
    if len(event['genreId']):
        genreId = event['genreId']
        payload['genreId'] = event['genreId']

if 'page' in event:
    page = event['page']
    payload['page'] = event['page']

if 'shopCode' in event:
    if len(event['shopCode']):
        shopCode = event['shopCode']
        payload['shopCode'] = event['shopCode']

if 'genreName' in event:
    if len(event['genreName']):
        payload['genreName'] = event['genreName']

if 'keyword' in event:
    if len(event['keyword']):
        payload['keyword'] = event['keyword']

payload['minPrice'] = 100

payload['maxPrice'] = 100000
payload['NGKeyword'] = 'リチウム 中古'

r = requests.get(url, params=payload)
resp = r.json() 

That covers how to obtain an application ID to use the Rakuten API, and the basic usage of the API. Let's build programs that help with your own research.

#Rakuten #Research #RakutenAPI #Programming #API #IT #Reselling