Updated timestamp inconsistent in public products.json endpoint?

Retired Boards Appdev Merchandising

Topic summary

A legacy app relying on the deprecated public products.json endpoint now sees each product’s updated_at always reflect the current timestamp, no longer matching real product update times. This behavior began about a week ago and breaks prior assumptions about update tracking.

The requester asks if this will be fixed but acknowledges the need to migrate to supported APIs.

Response suggests this is likely intentional and not something to be fixed, serving as a push to use official APIs. The impact is noted as primarily affecting scrapers.

Recommended paths:

  • Pull product data via the supported API for reliable updated_at values.
  • If public exposure is needed, surface necessary fields through theme code using Liquid (the theme templating language).

Outcome: No commitment to restore prior behavior. Guidance is to migrate off the public endpoint. Discussion remains open with no explicit resolution on a fix.

Summarized with AI on January 18. AI used: gpt-5.
1

We have a legacy app that occasionally queries the public products.json endpoint (which I understand is old and deprecated) e.g. https://example.com/products.json

We look at the product’s updated_at field, which until a week ago seemed to be consistent with when the product was actually updated. Now, it seems to always display the current timestamp and is unrelated to actual product updates. Is it possible that this will be fixed?

I realize this is a good reason to move our legacy app to supported APIs, but was hoping to have an answer in the meantime.

2

This is likely the trigger for you to pull the data via the API vs a public endpoint. I would not call this something that needs to be fixed and should really only impact scrapers. Scrapers that should be pulling the data can still do so via the API. Those that need to pull the data via the theme code you should still be able to expose the info with Liquid.