Latest Shopify Api Update broke my shipping software!

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Shopify’s April 1 API update changed the order export XML format, breaking existing shipping workflows. Previously, product data had separate fields for Name and a Variant section (Option Name=“Variant” with a Description listing Size/Color/Wire Length). After the update, variant details are appended to the Name field on a single line (e.g., “Product Name - Size: X / Color: Y / Wire Length: Z”), and the Variant section is removed.

Impact: ShipWorks-based code that extracted customer selections from name=“Variant” no longer functions, disrupting invoices, product labels, and shipping. Friday operations were severely affected, and shipments may halt by Monday without a fix.

Action sought: Hiring a developer urgently to parse the new attributes from the Name field after the hyphen as a workaround.

Status: Unresolved and time-sensitive. The included XML examples are central to understanding the issue.

Summarized with AI on January 29. AI used: gpt-5.
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as of April 1st we who use shipping software need to update to the latest shopify API. I did so on Thursday afternoon and Friday was a real disaster.

The products used to export from shopify like this with the name and the variants listed in separate sections:

Universal Solid LEDs for transformers … Variant Size: 3mm / Color: Warm White / Wire Length: 8 inch

And now after the update they export all on one line:

Universal Solid LEDs for transformers - Size: 3mm / Color: Warm White / Wire Length: 8 inch

Our shipworks code is constantly grabbing information from (name=”Variant”) to display the customer’s selections on our invoices, and product labels, and now the section named “Variant” no longer exists in the XML export.

I am trying to hire a coder to help find the new attributes after the “-” on very short notice, before Monday! Or we will be unable to ship orders until the work around is found!