Retrieving the Data for One Item  

To retrieve the data for a single item, use GetItem. Doing this involves three general steps: setting up the execution environment, specifying the data to return (based on the item ID), and making the API call.

Retrieving the data for a single item entails specifying the item ID for the item to return.

GetItem returns the data for one item. The result set consists of one ItemType object, which contains the item's data. See the GetItem documentation in the eBay Trading API Call Reference for details.

GetItem Call Reference

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

Retrieving an Item with Item Specifics and/or Product Data

If a listing includes Item Specifics, the Item Specifics will be returned when you execute GetItem with the ReturnAll or ItemReturnAttributes detail level. Similarly, if the listing includes catalog product details, the product details will be returned with these detail levels. See Working with Attribute-Based Features for information about listing with Item Specifics and product details.

When you list in certain categories (or, more specifically, certain characteristics sets), GetItem may return additional Item Specifics that are computed from other attribute values. This means that the AttributeSet object in the response may not always be identical to the AttributeSet that the seller submitted. For example, suppose a category's Item Specifics include separate attributes for City (e.g., "San Jose"), State (e.g., "CA), and Zip Code (e.g., "95125"). In some categories, the GetItem response might contain those attributes plus an additional attribute that shows all three values together in one field (e.g., "San Jose, CA 95125") for display purposes.

When a listing includes product details and the seller has chosen to include additional stock summary information in the listing, the Description field is optional. This means items returned by GetItem (and other item-retrieval calls) are not guaranteed to contain a value in the Description field.

The Item Specifics data in the GetItem response includes attribute and value IDs, and literal values for the specified IDs. If your application has saved the attribute meta-data returned from GetAttributesCS that was in effect at the time of the listing start date, you can use the meta-data to determine the display name for each attribute.

User-Contributed Notes