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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T19:00:11+00:00

I’m following the directions on the API documentation precisely, and after some frustration I

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I’m following the directions on the API documentation precisely, and after some frustration I finally put together something directly from their examples on http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01/DG/rest-signature.html

I’ve tried this python script on a few machines and have gotten the same result on all of them.

import hmac
from base64 import b64encode
from hashlib import sha256

secret_key = '1234567890'

to_sign = """GET
webservices.amazon.com
/onca/xml
AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI44QH8DHBEXAMPLE&ItemId=0679722769&Operation=ItemLookup&ResponseGroup=ItemAttributes%2COffers%2CImages%2CReviews&Service=AWSECommerceService&Timestamp=2009-01-01T12%3A00%3A00Z&Version=2009-01-06"""

print b64encode(hmac.new(secret_key, to_sign, sha256).digest())

The instructions say that the signature using this request, and this key, is Nace+U3Az4OhN7tISqgs1vdLBHBEijWcBeCqL5xN9xg= but I get O6UTkH+m4zAQUvB+WXUZJeA8bZcKAdkc4crKgHtbc6s=

(Before anyone says anything: The example page displays the requests wrapped at 65 characters; I’ve already tried it. This doesn’t provide a solution, and is not stated in the instructions for signature creation.)

EDIT: I found the answer, see below.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Well, look at that… The docs were wrong.

    I stumbled on an old (nearly) duplicate of this question: Calculating a SHA hash with a string + secret key in python

    It looks like the AWSAccessKeyId value changed from 00000000000000000000 to AKIAI44QH8DHBEXAMPLE in the example requests page.

    Updating this in the script prints the expected key, Nace+U3Az4OhN7tISqgs1vdLBHBEijWcBeCqL5xN9xg=

    import hmac
from base64 import b64encode
from hashlib import sha256

secret_key = '1234567890'

to_sign = """GET
webservices.amazon.com
/onca/xml
AWSAccessKeyId=00000000000000000000&ItemId=0679722769&Operation=ItemLookup&ResponseGroup=ItemAttributes%2COffers%2CImages%2CReviews&Service=AWSECommerceService&Timestamp=2009-01-01T12%3A00%3A00Z&Version=2009-01-06"""

print b64encode(hmac.new(secret_key, to_sign, sha256).digest())
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