Annoying N00b question - To serve parts info from my API do I need to build an app?

RussellWyatt
Visitor
2 0 0

Hi

 

I have responsibility for a repository of Motorcycle parts. We supply this parts information for integration in Motorcycle dealerships websites. I currently have a js library and a wordPress plugin which connects to our API and enables our catalogue to be interrogated from the webpage and parts added to the cart etc.

Now, we have had a request for integration into a Shopify site. What is the way we do this? I'm thinking I need to build an app, am I correct in this? I need to be able to wrap our API calls and render assembly images and parts lists through to the user. I'm completely new to Shopify so would be hugely grateful if someone could give me some guidance on the best manner to do this. 

Yes I'm a developer, I have experience with a number of languages and technologies. Just a few quick pointers should set me on my way.

Thanks in advance.

Russell Wyatt

 

Replies 3 (3)

jam_chan
Shopify Partner
891 23 171

Yes, you probably need to develop a private app to sync data from your site to the Shopify store. Use admin api (rest and graphql) to sync data to create new products and variants, etc.

If the inventory quantity is important, you need to handle syncing inventory too. Something like inventory level.

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RussellWyatt
Visitor
2 0 0

First of all thank you hugely for replying.

Secondly, as it turns out it looks like the developer who will be developing the site knows how to write apps, so the the plan is that I tell them how to interact with our api, so that is hopefully all good.

Thirdly however, is it necessary to sync in all the parts / products? We are talking of thousand of parts here, tens of thousands in fact. It's probably best that they stay in our api and the relevant details part no, desc, price etc and the diagram are just displayed at run time. The parts and prices may get updated at anytime so we just need them to be able to pick the part and add to the cart without the parts really being in the shopify catalogue, does this sound possible or does this fundamentally go against the way Shopify works?

Many thanks 

Russell

 

jam_chan
Shopify Partner
891 23 171

It really depends on your business use case. 

If you want to use Shopify cart to checkout, your products and variants have to be updated all the time so the order amount will be correct. 

It is not possible to have you product data in another database, and the customers can add these products to the Shopify cart 

I think you will probably use the shopify bulkOperation api and cron job to handle the products sync

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