With Open eBay Apps, you can embed an application directly in the eBay.com interface. Your application can appear alongside Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro, eBay's most popular tools for managing selling activities. For an overview of the program, see the Open eBay Apps product page.
With Open eBay Apps, you can:
Please see Getting Your Application into Production.
These are the requirements for having your Open eBay app approved and listed in the Apps Center, where sellers can subscribe to it.
Open eBay Apps supports the open-standard Gadgets specification. We recommend that Open eBay Apps developers familiarize themselves thoroughly with the specification.
Application code can be fully hosted off eBay (URL content type), or hosted on eBay and contained inline (HTML content type) in a deployment descriptor.
eBay has implemented a gadget server and a gadget container that support the core and selected features of the Gadgets specification (see Supported Gadget Libraries below), and an additional API for calling eBay APIs (see Using eBay's callAPI Library).
This framework enables third-party developers to write web applications that eBay users access through My eBay. Open eBay apps must conform to the Gadget specifications, meet the participation requirements, and have deployment descriptors that specify the application's metadata. eBay's gadget container uses this metadata to render the applications in IFrames in the Open eBay Apps interface.
The Open eBay Apps framework is designed to support web applications that customers can use without installing anything on their desktops. Some existing Open eBay apps make plugins available to their users, but client-side applications are not likely to be good candidates for Open eBay apps. If your web application includes client-side downloads, they will need to be approved during the Business Readiness Review.
To see how to quickly run an application in the sandbox environment, see Getting an Application Running in the Sandbox.
Open eBay Apps is only available on the U.S. site.
Please review the latest information about SM Apps at the SM Apps forum and at the Developer Tools announcements.
The Gadgets spec defines two content types for gadgets: HTML and URL.
Open eBay apps can be either type, but it is expected that most will be URL-type. Developing a URL-type application can be as simple as taking an existing hosted application and writing a deployment descriptor for it, assuming that it meets the Open eBay Apps program requirements. URL-type applications have a wider array of possibilities for their user interfaces and programming logic, and are not limited to HTML and JavaScript or Flash.
See Gadget Content Types for more information about content types in Open eBay Apps.
Your Open eBay app will appear as a canvas view, with full page width and flexible height, in a seller's Applications tab in My eBay. A canvas view is required for all applications.
Your application can optionally also have one or two Summary views, fixed-size smaller views that appear in the seller's Summary page. Summary views can be a single-column view (default) or a two-column view (wide).
See Views for more details.
Open eBay Apps includes the OpeneBayParticipantInterface service and the OpeneBaySubscription service.
eBay sends subscription-related requests to your application. For users to subscribe, your application must "listen" for these calls. Specifically, you must implement the OpeneBayParticipantInterface (OEPI) service. See Enabling Subscription.
For calls related to subscriptions and plans, you use the OpeneBaySubscription service (OESS). For example, you can make an addUsage call. This call can add charges for a subscriber, including some nonusage types of charges, e.g. a monthly subscription fee. You also can retreive information about your subscription plans and subscribers. See Performing Billing Operations.
To deploy your Open eBay app, you must use a deployment descriptor, which is an XML file that contains application metadata and deployment preferences. For HTML-type gadgets, the deployment descriptor also contains the inline HTML and JavaScript that comprise your gadget.
See Preparing Your Deployment Descriptor.
Open eBay apps can use the many calls in the eBay Trading API, eBay Finding API, and other eBay APIs. There are more than 125 calls in the eBay Trading API.
The Trading API also includes 26 calls specifically designed to work with Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro. For an overview of these Selling Manager calls, see the Trading API WebHelp.
There is a wide range of possibilities for Open eBay apps. Based on our research, we think email management, customer management, shipping and fulfillment, bulk editing of listings, UPI process management, picture management, profitability analysis, and inventory management are all pretty good bets. But that doesn't preclude other application types. Your application might create a social networking application or provide special filtering. We know that we have not anticipated all the directions developers might go with this opportunity, and we expect to be pleasantly surprised by innovative implementations.
This documentation and the API may only be used in accordance with the eBay Developers Program and API License Agreement.
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