eBay’s Category Aspects metadata, which has given definition to our marketplace listings, is evolving at a fast pace. With these rapid enhancements, a consequent challenge of keeping this metadata in sync and gaining quick insights into what might have changed is of increasing importance to our developer community.
We recently enhanced Taxonomy API by adding the capability to retrieve aspect metadata across categories. Also, we released an open-source SDK designed to aid users with insights on aspect metadata changes. This SDK leverages the bulk download feature for aspects. It compares aspect metadata across the two category trees. The output is a precise, structured response to address the following scenarios:
- What has changed between bulk data file A and say a more recent bulk data file B
- Compare bulk data file A to the latest on the site and report differences
Without any ambiguity, the output shows for categories and aspects:
- What is new
- What is modified
- What is removed
We trust the release of Taxonomy API enhancements, and this SDK brings transparency to the evolution of our metadata for our partners. The SDK is the latest addition to already open-sourced tools to simplify integration with eBay’s RESTful APIs. Contributions from the developer community are welcome.