How can you better manage your Shopify store? Optimizing your product data is a game changer with the Shopify Product API. In this guide, BSS Commerce will show you the key features and benefits of the Shopify Product API. We also show you how to use the API to automate your product management processes, step by step. Then we will walk you through how Shopify Product API can change your store operations and make your life easier.
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Understand Shopify Product API
What is Shopify Product API?
Shopify Product API is a great way to programmatically manage Shopify stores. It’s part of the larger Shopify API, which allows external applications to integrate with Shopify.
The Shopify Product API allows developers to get product data, create new products, modify existing products, manage information about products including their images, variants, prices, and inventory. Standard HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE are used by the API to work with the Shopify store through various endpoints. This helps developers to create custom solutions, automate tasks and synchronize data flowing from Shopify to other systems.
Key Features of Shopify Product API
The Shopify Product API has a lot of key features that make it a powerful tool for developers and ecommerce entrepreneurs. Let’s check out below:
- The Shopify API Product lets developers pull in detail on a Shopify store’s product such as product IDs, variant descriptions, price, images, specs, and inventory.
- The API allows developers to make direct requests to the product database, and get only the information they need. This API is very flexible to the specific needs of any business.
- Developers use the API to build new products, update old products and manage product variants. For instance, it simplifies things, like adding new items into catalog or changing product details.
- Developers can add, update or delete multiple products at once, something the API supports through batch processing. It’s especially useful for large stores with a large catalog of products.
- Shopify product API is a great API that integrates well with other systems and applications. It helps developers to build a coherent, multi-channel solution that syncs data across platforms.
- With the Shopify API product, developers are able to innovate with a new price engine that allows for dynamic pricing, automated SEO optimization, and programmatic flash sales and promotions.
That’s all key features that you need to consider when choosing to use Shopify product API.
Benefits of Using Shopify Product API
If you want to simplify your product management and improve your online store, Shopify product API is a great choice. Let us show you key benefits of Shopify product API:
- Developers have comprehensive access to in-depth product information such as product ID, variants, pricing, inventory, image and can build robust product management solutions.
- Tasks such as creating new products, updating current ones, and managing product variants are easier. Besides, they save you lots of time thereby increasing productivity on your ecommerce store.
- API supports batch processing, making it easy for businesses with large product detail lists to add, update, and delete products in bulk. The Shopify Product API is more than just a product management tool. It is a way for developers to create integrations that seamlessly move product data between one system or platform to another.
- Additionally, Shopify product API will automatically update stock levels with each sale or new inventory delivery means there’s no need for manual effort to keep inventory accurate.
- The API can also be used by developers to automate critical SEO optimizations including product title, description, and image optimization, increasing search engine visibility.
In the end, developers can ultimately integrate product data directly into their apps, allowing merchants to have a single, streamlined interface to manage their products, inventory and pricing, all of which improves the user experience.
Shopify Product API Integration
1. Create Product with Shopify API
Let’s find out how to create a new product by Shopify Product API through instructions below:
Step 1: Set up a Private App
To interact with the Shopify API you’ll need to create a private app in your Shopify admin dashboard. You will be able to authenticate API requests.
Steps to create a private app:
- Go to your Shopify admin dashboard and login
- Navigate to Apps > Manage private apps > Create a new private app
- Enter the app details and name it
- On the Admin API section, set the permission to “Read and Write” for product creation.
- Save the app to get the API key and access token
Step 2: Formulate an API Call
You can now create an API call to add a new product with the right credentials. You’ll need three things to do that:
Endpoint: The endpoint to create a product is typically https://{your-shop-name}.myshopify.com/admin/api/2023-07/products.json
Method: As you are adding new data, use the POST method.
Headers: Include headers such as Content-Type: application/json and X-Shopify-Access-Token: {your-access-token}
Step 3: Define the Product Details
Next, write the details of the product into JSON format. Here’s an example:
{
“product”: {
“title”: “Burton Custom Freestyle Snowboard”,
“body_html”: “<strong>Perfect for all snowboarding enthusiasts!</strong>”,
“vendor”: “Burton”,
“product_type”: “Snowboard”,
“tags”: [“Freestyle”, “All Mountain”],
“variants”: [
{
“option1”: “First”,
“price”: “499.99”,
“sku”: “123”
}
],
“images”: [{
“src”: “https://{image_url_here}”
}]
}
}
It includes product title, description, vendor, type, tags, variants and an image.
Step 4: Send the API Request and Manage the Response
You can use the tool Postman to send the POST request also with the JSON data to the endpoint. The Shopify API will return a response from creating the product with the new product’s details when the product has been created.
You should carefully review the response looking for any potential errors or exceptions: invalid data, rate limit issues, etc.
Step 5: Verify the Product Creation
Open your Shopify admin dashboard, click on Products. Check that the new product was added successfully to the API, and all the details, (including the product image you provided) are matching.
Update Product with Shopify API
You only need to do 5 steps to easily update an existing product by using the Shopify Product API:
Step 1: Get the Product ID
To update the product you will first need to get the product’s ID. You can do this by making a GET request to the following endpoint:
https://{your-shop-name}.myshopify.com/admin/api/2023-07/products.json
This will return you a list of all products in your Shopify store. From this list you can see what product you want to update and write down the Product ID of that product.
Step 2: Create an API Call for Updating
You need use this data to generate the API call to update the product with the Product ID:
Endpoint: https://{your-shop-name}.myshopify.com/admin/api/2023-07/products/{product-id}.json
Method: To update an existing product, let’s use the PUT method
Headers:
Content-Type: application/json
X-Shopify-Access-Token: {your-access-token}
Step 3: Define the Updated Product Data
Next, you’ll have to format the updated product details in JSON format. Just add the fields you want to change, product title, variants, pricing etc.
For example, to update the product title and price of a variant:
{
“product”: {
“id”: {product-id},
“title”: “Updated Burton Custom Freestyle Snowboard”,
“variants”: [{
“id”: {variant-id},
“price”: “399.99”
}]
}
}
Step 4: Send the API Request and Manage the Response
You can use a tool like Postman to send the PUT request with the updated JSON data to the endpoint.
With that, a response with updated product details will be sent by the Shopify Product API. You need to check the response to ensure the changes were applied correctly and check for any errors.
Step 5: Verify the Product Update
Finally, you relog into your Shopify admin dashboard and go to the Products section. You then see the updated product and make sure changes such as the title and price have been done correctly.
Delete Product with Shopify API
Below are step-by-step instructions to delete Product with Shopify Product API:
Step 1: Get the Product ID
The first thing you need to do is get an ID of the item you want to delete. You can do this by making a GET request to the following endpoint:
https://{your-shop-name}.myshopify.com/admin/api/2023-07/products.json
This will return a list of all the products within your Shopify store. Find the product that you want to delete and take note of its Product ID.
Step 2: Create an API Call for Deletion
With this Product ID, you can construct the API call to delete the product. Utilize the following information:
Endpoint:
https://{your-shop-name}.myshopify.com/admin/api/2023-07/products/{product-id}.json
Method: Use the DELETE method to remove the product
Headers:
Content-Type: application/json
X-Shopify-Access-Token: {your-access-token}
Step 3: Send the Delete Request
You can use any tool you prefer to send the DELETE request to the endpoint you have created in the previous step.
Step 4: Manage the Response
In case of success deletion, Shopify Product API will respond with HTTP “200 OK” and with no response body content.
Step 5: Verify the Product Deletion
When you’re done, log back into your Shopify admin dashboard then click Products. Make sure that the product you deleted doesn’t appear anymore in the list.
After these steps, you will be able to delete products in bulk from your Shopify store using Shopify API Product. You will not have to do it one by one in the admin interface.
Some key things to note:
- Be sure to have the correct Product ID, because the Shopify API will not give you any additional confirmation or warning before deleting the item.
- Check to make sure the API returned no error in response.
- If you have deleted a product in Shopify, please check again from your admin in Shopify that this product has also been deleted from your store.
The Shopify Product API has a lot of functionality for managing your store’s products. Sometimes, however, an off-the-shelf solution can be even more valuable. One example here is BSS: B2B & Wholesale Solution, an all-in-one B2B and wholesale management system.
It has custom pricing, tiered pricing, wholesale registration forms, minimum order quantities, and more. You can also integrate this with your Shopify Store so that your wholesale customers can benefit from a great B2B shopping experience. You will still be able to have insight into exactly what your Wholesale customers are ordering.
Challenges with Shopify Product API
The Shopify Product API has a lot of awesome features and advantages. However, it also has a number of challenges and things one needs to know as a developer while working with the API.
The biggest problem with the Shopify Product API is the rate limits. This slows down your rate limiting. It can turn into a problem if you have to update or manage large numbers of your products in your ecommerce store.
The second issue is that products are complex in nature. They have so many variants, options and associated metadata. Such relationships are definitely so important. They need to be very well planned and maintained so that any changes to the already existing product structure are not affected.
Shopify Product API for bulk update will result in your inventory not having high accuracy. Somehow, the differences in syncing may grow over time. Such a robust process requires a developer to configure both matching and inventory monitoring needs.
Last but not least, the Shopify API has a learning curve that is pretty steep, especially for developers new to either APIs or the Shopify ecosystem. The investment in time and effort necessary for mastering the details of the API itself, the different endpoints, and how best to integrate with it is very high.
To overcome these challenges, developers can consider Wholesale solutions such as BSS Wholesale B2B Solution. It will extend the Shopify API into a product and other features helpful in the management of products, inventory, and other e-commerce activities.
Conclusion
If you’re an eCommerce store owner, the Shopify Product API is quite difficult at first. It is a complete solution from product design to inventory management. It will also make your store more efficient. In spite of some drawbacks, it’s an essential tool for any modern online business.
Are you ready to level up your Shopify store? Let’s get started exploring the Shopify Product API!
