Welcome to the eBid Developer Portal

Latest API Version 2.0

Our API is currently available in XML or JSON format. Sign up for free today to obtain your eBid developer keys.

Getting Started

# Open an eBid Developer account, just use the sign up link above.
# You will receive your token and id which you will need to use when making any calls to the eBid API.
# Check out our "Documentation":wiki and familiarize yourself with out methods and see example of code using these methods.

Authentication Procedure

To use functions like adding or editing items for sale, the user of your app will need to be registered on eBid as a SELLER or SELLER+ and the will have to login to your app. Logging in entails two steps.

First step is creating the a SessionID (GetSessionID). The session ID is a one time key that allows you to refer users to the login process. Once you receive it you must redirect the user to the login page which is hosted on our servers. They URL to redirect to is sent with the SessionID in (or similar for JSON) tags . After submitting the form and a successful username/password combo is processed by the API the user will be redirected back to your site/application to one of URLs you specified in the SessionID creation process ( and )

Login time can be between 1hr and 1 year.

Once user has logged in you will need to fetch a LoginKey using API method GetLoginKey. This key should be stored and sent with any methods that require it. As soon as you receive the LoginKey the SessionID will become invalid. The LoginKey can only be requested once per SessionID request. The LoginKey should be sent with any necessary methods. An invalid LoginKey will return an error for the method you are using. In your code you will need to be preared for an expired LoginKey (error code 001). If you getting error code 002 whilst logging in you will also need to create new SessionID and start login procedure again.

Note. User login is required only for some functions, not all. For example searching listings, requesting auction data.

Notes About Versions

Each query sent to the eBid API must state which version of the eBid API your app or software is targetting. If none is received then the default up to date version of the API wil be referenced. We advise keeping your app up to date with the latest version to access all the latest functions and, most importantly,

View JSON Docs

View XML Docs

Example PHP + JSON Code

$appId = "xxxxxxxx";
$appKey = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
$version = "2.0";
$ebidSite = "uk";
$command = "GetCategoryInfo";
$categoryID = "2524";
$args = array("AppId" => $appId, "AppKey" => $appKey, "Version" => $version, "EbidSite" => $ebidSite, "CategoryID" => $categoryID, "Command" => $command);
$post_fields = json_encode($args);
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Content-Type: application/json" ));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,"http://api.ebid.net/trading");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$post_fields);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
var_dump($response);