Shortcuts help: auto-download an Amazon product image

Tech Support
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Hey folks smarter than me,

I’m trying to get shortcuts to take an Amazon URL and auto-download the first product image on the page, but no matter how much I play with the Shortcuts actions, I can’t figure out how to get it to grab an image–or even the image URL. Any idea how to get it to grab the image?

Thanks!

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This is probably both more and less than you want, but the best product images come from using Amazon’s product advertising API. I have two posts that show how to get the images via Python and Shortcuts:

The code is specialized for books, but I think it could be tweaked for other products. The Python code gives you, among other things, the URL of the highest-resolution product image, and the shortcut downloads that image.

If you just want the lower-res product image on the page, someone else will have to help you.

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Also note that if you fail to do as the good doctor recommends and use the Amazon API, then you risk Amazon spotting your automation attempt and thwarting it. I’ve found that from my own attempts to get the canonical URL from an Amazon.com page using curl.

Amazon does not want people doing any sort of automation against their pages unless they are in control of the tools. (See also: Google.)

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Thank you SO much for those links–that is wonderful help and a great starting point for me. Thank you!

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Thanks for that advice–I don’t think what I’m doing would trip any flags because it’s super low volume (maybe 5/day), but definitely want to do it the proper way if at all possible!