I need help with setting up product feed (from supplier API) with php

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Automating a supplier’s product feed and inventory sync into a Shopify store, with challenges around implementation (PHP) and category mapping.

  • Context: Supplier offers full catalog via CSV/XML/JSON and an API; stock updates daily. Store uses the Ella Shopify theme. Wants to import only selected products from ~40k items.

  • Problem 1: No PHP experience and unsure where to integrate the supplier’s API code or how to link it to Shopify’s product database. Needs a way to filter which products are imported.

  • Problem 2: Supplier uses numeric category IDs (e.g., 52245) that must map to store-friendly category names (e.g., “Men’s fragrances”). Manual CSV editing is not viable due to daily updates.

  • Constraints/requests: Seeking an automated solution; open to paid help. Looking for budget-friendly apps or methods (Stock Sync is considered too expensive).

  • Needs: Guidance on implementation approach (API integration, workflow), product filtering strategy, and a robust ID-to-category mapping method that can run automatically.

  • Status: No proposed solutions yet; the request remains open and unresolved.

Summarized with AI on February 23. AI used: gpt-5.
1

So I’ll try to keep this short. Tl:dr down below .

My supplier uses a couple of product-list/inventory systems. They provide csv/xml/json files with the entire catalog of products and their stock amounts.

They also offer an API connection and documentation for this.

The problem #1 is that I don’t have any experience programming in PHP. I have just started out as a web dev but mainly JS/React, not php.

So the big issue here is that I don’t know where I should start. I don’t know where to integrate the code they provide, and also not how to get this working and link this to my product database in my store. FYI, I use the theme of ‘Ella’ , if that matters at all.

Another thing I wonder is how do I choose which products I want, and which ones I dont… There are 40k+ lines of products so I can’t go through them manually. In the worst case, I would do it, if this would only be a one time thing.

Problem #2 is that in their lists, they use integer values as categories. So eg. 52245 as a number, for the category of ‘men’s perfume’. When importing this to my store, how would I be able to pair this as ‘Mens fragrances’, when it gets imported as a numerical value?

I was first thinking about exporting their CSV, editing this and manually adding categories instead of numbers, then again export this as CSV (while praying this process doesn’t mess up any 000’s or other weird symbols). And then importing this to Shopify manually.

But the problem there is that the stock gets updated daily so this would become a daily process.

So pretty please, can somebody help me automate this whole thing? I would be forever grateful. I am open for paid options if you can deliver results of course. If there is any good easy and not too expensive app that I am missing, please tell me. (Stock Sync is too expensive)

tl:dr; my supplier offers API connection to automate product feed and inventory quantities but I don’t know how to apply this. They also use numbers instead of String/words values in their ‘category’ column so I need to find a way to translate this to my Store’s categories.