Retrieving All Members of a Product Family
If a product family is large, only the header is shown on the eBay Web site (with no products). In this case, the user can click a View Versions button to view all products in that family.
If a search result returned from GetProductSearchResultsCall does not return all products in a family (see Limit the Quantity of Products Returned Per Family), and if the user wants to see more versions (editions) of the product, you can use GetProductFamilyMembersCall to retrieve all versions of the product. That is, if GetProductSearchResultsCallonly returns the product family header, you use this call to zoom in on a particular family of product versions. Once the seller has selected a product from the results, you pass its ID as input to GetProductSellingPagesCall
The GetProductFamilyMembersCall usage, input fields, and return fields are nearly identical to those of GetProductSearchResultsCall. The main differences are that with GetProductFamilyMembersCall:
- Instead of passing search attributes in a query, you pass in a product ID for any product in the family of interest. (It does not matter which product you use; any product can be used to identify its family.)
- As the intent is to return all members in each family, the ProductSearch.MaxChildrenPerFamily input field is not applicable.
- Because each search is on a product ID instead of a keyword consisting of attributes and values, the call returns all products in the family, not just the ones that match the user's earlier query.
- Only one product family is returned for each product ID. Note:
- With compatibility level 415 and higher, the product families and certain other data are returned as properties of ProductSearchResult.AttributeSet, consistent with the GetProductSearchResults response. With lower compatibility levels, the product families and other data are returned as properties of ProductSearchResult (not of AttributeSet).
Once the seller has selected a product, use that product's ID as input to GetProductSellingPagesCall to retrieve the product's Item Specifics and other information (see Retrieving a Product's Item Specifics).