eBay API FindPopularSearches call using node.js returns 'Getting popular keywords is not enabled on current site' error

Question

I'm using the "request" module and passing all the correct arguments for the eBay API's FindPopularSearches endpoint and no matter what I do, I keep getting this error:

Getting popular keywords is not enabled on current site.

At first I thought it was a mismatch between the categoryID I had fetched and the siteid I was using. But double-checking that with someone else's code, I was able to conclude that my API call was properly built.

http://open.api.sandbox.ebay.com/shopping?appid=<my-app-id>&callname=FindPopularSearches&siteid=0&responseencoding=JSON&version=847&CategoryID=10159

Answer 1

Shopping API calls such as FPS don't work too well with Sandbox, as you discovered. Since such calls are read-only, eBay recommends simply making them directly to Production.

Answer 2

I tried switching to a production app id, and using the production API and this solved my problem. AFAIK, this call does not seem to function in sandbox mode.

It would have been nice to have written that down in an obvious place in the docs but hey, that's why I'm leaving it here.

So I guess the "site" in the error message means sandbox vs production.