Customizable product integration with Printful

[ElectricSheep1]

I'm building a Shopify store where customers can create their own artwork then apply that artwork to a product they can order. I know there are Printful templates that allow product customization through local file uploads for images, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. I want my process to be smooth and automated - for example:

1. Customer creates artwork

2. Customer selects "Print my artwork"

3. Artwork is automatically applied to product template for ordering

4. Placed order is automatically fulfilled by Printful

It seems the out-of-the-box integration will either require the customer to manually download and upload their image to a compatible customizable product template, or it would require me to manually apply their image to a Printful order after the Shopify order comes through.

I can handle some custom dev work for end-to-end automation, but could use guidance on the best way to do this. I imagine I'll need to use the Printful API for a custom integration like this.

[PaulNewton]

You need to exhaust feasibility on Printfuls side of things what they can support either in frontend capability, or backend apis.

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@ElectricSheep1 wrote:

It seems the out-of-the-box integration will either require the customer to manually download and upload their image to a compatible customizable product template, or it would require me to manually apply their image to a Printful order after the Shopify order comes through.

Check if it just has a file api you can just pipe a file, base64, blob ,etc on the frontend, if so then a middelware app might only be needed if working on very large files.
Or if the target input has clipboard paste behavior, if so then just prompt the user to copy the canvas or img to the clipboard. Note clipboard is protected so javascipt can't just arbitrarily add things to a users clipboard for obvious security/sanity reasons. 

Midnight spitball,  afaik browsers native OS file inputs don't 🤔 allow programmatically inserting a file into them as they require user interaction 😕. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input/file#notes 

Javascript based ones can https://pqina.nl/filepond/ .

Most file inputs work with drag an drop but again afaik you cannot drag onpage "files" like canvas or <img> elements into a native file input it just navigates the page to that img or opens the image in a new tab 🤔; BUT if there is a way you can drag an onpage asset to a native-file input then you can obfuscate the entire upload process possibly by presenting a file-input as a "staging" or "confirm selection" box in UX flow. But lots of ifs there also considering that a target native file-input would be part of printfuls frontend UI you'd have to nab and recontextualize. At least in chrome on this page https://pqina.nl/filepond/ you can drag the onpage profile picture near the bottom of the page into one of the demo inputs, though it may just be fetching the image through the url. 

[ElectricSheep1]

Thanks for this. I'll definitely reach out to Printful to see what they support, and I was not aware of the OS file input limitations. A drag and drop scenario would work well for me, I just want to avoid a situation where an image needs to be downloaded and then uploaded again - but it looks like there could be a workaround depending on the file types that the Printful API accepts. I'll start looking through their API docs.

[Antonios]

Any luck on this ? I wanted to create a similar thing

[Zentrifuge]

Hi ElectricSheep1,
did you get your automation working nicely?

Because I'm working on something quite similar, and I find Printful's API quite flexible and think you should get what you want there.

My solution so far:
... is a python script which talks to both SHOPIFY and PRINTFUL APIs, prepares and uploads custom printfiles and then creates a new custom PRINTFUL product/variants. (I'm happy to share more details.)

The missing piece for me (and you?):
... seems to be to generate and issue a customized PRINTFUL order (or intercept and modify an existing one) based on the buyers' custom parameters. And of course the script should run automatically on a server whenever such a SHOPIFY order is issued.

[misterfox]

What was the solution? Came here for the same thing. Come on, ElectricSheep1! The people want to know 🙏

[Zentrifuge]

Hi Misterfox,
I am getting by with the following approach:

1. In my Shopify Theme, I'm doing what this guy describes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtJ77gcWqaU
2. I m keeping the products in question linked to, but not synced in my Printful shop.
3. when an order comes in, it is forwarded to Printful but put on hold by Printful, I get notified, adjust the order fulfillment to match customizations, and then resume the order. (Automatizing this step should be possible too via the Printful RestAPI, and it is the next thing on my agenda.)

Hope this helps.

[misterfox]

Hey Zentrifuge, thanks! I saw that Youtube video too, actually.  Was very helpful for me setting up the frontend customization, but I'm struggling to send the data to Printful. What do you mean by "2. I m keeping the products in question linked to, but not synced in my Printful shop"? How does that work?

Also curious to know how you plan the hit the Printful REST API. Does Shopify offer that kind of integration?

[Zentrifuge]

How does that work? Its a while that I looked up the exact terminology, but you can configure in your Printful UI that incoming orders are not automatically fulfilled, but put on hold for you to review/adjust them before resuming them. I think Printful even had a video illustrating that.

Printful API: no integration required: I reckon you can use calls to Printful API to automatize the adjustments you need to make to orders featuring custom product parameters. I haven't looked into that in particular, but I successfully created entire new products/variants in my printful shop, which then in turn got automatically generated in my Shopify shop thanks to their plugin, so I find that API quite powerful.

[ManfredMuc]

Hello, we launched our Printful Product customizer a few days ago. Maybe this is the right solution for you. https://apps.shopify.com/cai-customizer

[ManfredMuc]

Hello, we launched our Printful Product customizer a few days ago. Maybe this is the right solution for you.
https://apps.shopify.com/cai-customizer