Using PictureURL in listing items

Summary

Your picture may not show up in the item correctly, or you may get "errors", "warnings", or even invalid LMS XML responses

Detailed Description There could be many reasons why you are having issues uploading a picture. But this article will describe one case.

When forming your API request, if a "bad" URL is provided for a PictureURL, instead of a typical Ack=Failure response, a SOAP Fault occurs.

Flow of Events: PictureURL with space(s) results in a SOAP Fault -> We retry 3 times, but it's still a SOAP Fault -> We write out the generic error that has a broken close tag -> You get invalid XML, error, or a warning.

In short, you can avoid this problem altogether by escaping spaces with %20 in image URLs, e.g. http://foo.com/my image.jpg to http://foo.com/my%20image.jpg. The documentation should or will be updated with this warning.

Additional Resources

PictureURL: http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/XML/docs/Reference/eBay/AddFixedPriceItem.html#Request.Item.PictureDetails.PictureURL

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