ASA2 service update 1.13.2 with many fixes and improvements

Written by Timo

Creator of ASA2

May 10, 2020

With the new ASA2 update there are some interesting new features.

PA API support for Netherlands, Singapore, Turkey, United Arab Emirates

With this update ASA2 gets Amazon PA API support for the following stores

  • Netherlands
  • Singapore
  • Turkey
  • United Arab Emirates

As a result, ASA2 now supports all countries currently supported by Amazon’s Product Advertising API.

Binding the Repo-Post ID with a shortcode

With the new option “repo_id” you can bind the Repo-Post-ID with a shortcode. The advantage is that you no longer have to change the ASIN in the shortcode when you exchange the product of the repo post. If there is a Repo ID connected to the short code, ASA2 handles the Repo ID with priority and looks up the Repo for the ID before it searches for the ASIN.

[asa2 repo_id="693"]B07FNSB9GM[/asa2]

Especially when a product is no longer available or you would like to exchange it for another one, this is a great help because you no longer have to search your pages for shortcodes and adjust them.

If you use ASA2’s Product Picker to insert a product from your ASA2 repo on a page, the repo ID will be inserted automatically if you leave the checkbox checked.

Inserting Repo-ID afterwards

Of course you can set the Repo ID afterwards. By using the new link “Embed” below an ASIN in the Repo, you can easily see an example shortcode that already contains the correct Repo ID.

As you can see on the screenshot, the new option “repo_id” is supported by all shortcodes that implement a single product:

New option “img” to change the main product image

With the new shortcode option “img” it is possible to change the main image of a product in the template. If a product has more than one image and you would like to use e.g. the third image as the main image, you can now achieve this with the following shortcode:

[asa2 img="3"]B07FNSB9GM[/asa2]

Check the asa2 shortcode documentation page for more details.

Updates of the Managed Templates

Simplification of Code

Some complicated calculations and conditions were partially outsourced into the PHP code, which makes the structure of the HTML code of the managed templates somewhat clearer. This has created some new placeholders, which can also be helpful when creating your own templates.

New Template Placeholders

Image placeholder:

  • {{ MainImageURL }} – The URL of the image selected as the main image of a product.
  • {{ MainImageWidth }} – The width in pixels of the image selected as the main image of a product.
  • {{ MainImageHeight }} – The height in pixels of the image selected as the main image of a product.
  • {{ ImageTargetURL }} – The URL to which product images should link. Can be configured as shop page or buy page.
  • {{ TitleTargetURL }} – The URL to which the product title should link. Can be configured as shop page or buy page.
  • {{ BuyButtonTargetURL }} – The URL to which buy buttons should link. Can be configured as shop page or buy page.
  • {{ BuyButtonText }} – The specified text that should be visible on a buy button.

Revised Repo URL Importer

It was noticed that the Repo URL Importer did not work properly. It directly tried to read the ratings of products, which could cause significant delays. This is now disabled by default and can be enabled if desired. In addition, it queried each product with a single API request. Now packages of 10 products are queried with one request (the maximum amount per request), which greatly improves the performance of the importer.

Bugfixes

Several bug reports have been collected, most of which have been processed and solved. With this update the following problems were fixed:

  • Managed templates “Horizontal_box”, “Book”, “Music” and “Movie” did not support title shortening via option “title_length”.
  • Proxy hosts did only support IP addresses. Now you can also use host names.
  • If the lowest and highest variation price were identical, both were shown. Now only one price gets displayed.
  • The rendering of templates in category descriptions did not work
  • The Product Picker only loaded the first page of search results with API 5. Now page 1 – 10 works again.
  • Template rendering issues with PHP 7.4 (missing whitespace) could be solved by updating ASA2’s template engine
  • Managed tempaltes displayed the savings amount twice, because the content of the placeholder has changed with PA API 5.
  • The price placeholders {{ …PriceAmount }} could contain a wrong values.

The new update is available as usual via WordPress-Autoupdate or as download on your account page.

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