everyone,
I have a "small" problem here for which I have not yet found a suitable solution. I hope you have the right food for thought for me.
We are currently in the process of introducing a new ERP (Weclapp - www.weclapp.com), which will transfer the product data to Woocommerce via ERP's own API. Many of our products are quite similar and available in different versions (industrial parts with different alloys, angles, sizes, etc.). Our product range includes tens of thousands of different products, so it is essential to offer the user a filtering option. Although it would be possible to create a variant article in the ERP, we would like to avoid this if possible (due to the circumstances that this would create on the part of the ERP). Unfortunately, the API does not allow us to transfer product attributes directly to single articles. The API only offers the possibility to transfer your own fields (created in the ERP) and output them in Woocommerce in the tab "Additional Information" or alternatively to fill an existing field in Woocommerce (can also be a custom field) via Meta Data Key.
I found the Meta Data Key for the product attributes, but I only have the possibility to transfer simple values like "Stainless Steel", "180°", "2SN" etc. The Meta Data Key for the product attributes looks a bit more cryptic and would be replaced by the simple values.
Does anyone have an idea or a workaround how I can use the values of the additional fields of the ERP as filterable data in Woocommerce?
Thanks a lot already!
Related
I've been using Bigcommerce's csv import to create and update simple products with c# and headless browser control. This is a relatively easy method as I can include custom fields, category names, images, GPS information, and all of the other fields that the csv import allows. Even so, my long term goal will be to move to the API. So far it appears that the API is very limited. For instance, instead of just including a category name with the new product, you have to include a category ID. As far as I can see, that would mean that for every new product I would have to create the categories for the product, then retrieve the category(s) id with an API call and lastly create the product. It appears that this is just the beginning. It appears that many of the fields that are easily included in the csv now have to be created and then attached to the product. Am I missing something?
I am using VirtoCommerce 2.9 and have some questions regarding the API and what would be the best way to get all the information I need, while keeping the number of API requests down.
Right now I am using the endpoint /api/catalog/search to find items that matches a number of attributes. But the response does not include prices and product texts. Both I would like to present to the end user. What would be the correct or best way to retrieve this information?
Thanks!
Cheers!
Currently search service does not return the description and price for the products.
To get this details you need to use separate queries
api/catalog/product/ids?respGroup='ItemSmall'
to get product detail with description and
api/pricing/evaluate
to retrieve actual products prices. You can call them in parallel for better performance.
Be aware to use WithProperties response group because it may cause
perfomance problem. Anyway product returned with all properties values
and this 'response group' is only responsible for retrieving properties meta-information
(as possible dictionary values, multilingual, required or optional flag etc) this information often used in admin area and in storefront almost not used.
Indexed search module will be serious changed in future versions, and you will be able to have more control over the product details in the search index.
I've successfully got 3rd party merchant orders posting new orders to my client's BigCommerce store programmatically. I've even got product options posting as part of the order (product->option set-> option relationships are a total cluster).
My client relies heavily on configurable fields. I'm able to pull the definitions of the configurable fields for each product, but can't find a way to POST or update the configurable field values through the API.
Is it possible to manipulate an order's configurable fields through the API?
Got a response from the support team # BigCommerce. Manipulating configurable fields via the API is not currently possible and not currently on the roadmap.
Original reply below:
Unfortunately that is a product limitation with the API, it will not tie to configurable fields on the product. The best you can do is attach that information through a generic text field like 'staff_notes'. Honestly I have not heard of any talk of adding a way to add products with configurable fields to orders via the API. I think this may be because anything that can be done with configurable fields can be done with options and options are what is being pushed for the future. I have noted this feedback down though and will pass it along to our Product Manager for the API. Best case scenario is that it may be seen in a future version of the API which is at least several months away.
I have to integrate my webshop with an external system. This system provides several functionalities, described in their API. This is what I want to do:
Import/sync products (this is available as CSV via request)
Update stock of products (also available as webrequest)
So I have to hook into the Magento stock check and I want some script which updates the products like everyday.
Where should I implement my changes? What is the best way to do this? I can imagine Magento already have some API stock functionalities, but can`t seem to find the right documentation.
Thanks in advance!
Firstly you could use the Magento web service via either SOAP and XML-RPC:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/api/soap/introduction.html#Introduction-SOAP
There's an API for updating stock levels:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/api/soap/catalogInventory/cataloginventory_stock_item.update.html
However, this is usually quite slow and can take some time to update large collections of products, in which case you are better going for a solution which uses the Magento object model directly, or something custom.
Depending upon your level of development expertise there's a few options available. One library to checkout is Magmi:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/magmi/index.php?title=Magmi_Wiki
this is useful for updating lots of product data / stock levels quite quickly.
If you do no require an automated solution, you could always use the standard Magento import/export profiles to import stock levels from a CSV file, a quick search for 'Magento Import Export Profiles' should give you a good starting place:
http://www.seenbest-web-design.com/techclub/importing-a-csv-of-products-to-magento/
http://www.woolleydesign.net/2011/02/updating-store-inventory-in-magento/
I am fully functionally using Magmi now. I have written a plugin to automatically create configurable products, so if anyone is ever interested let me know.
There is already a plugin to process configurable products, my plugin is dependent on that plugin.
Basically, you will only be able to create configurable products if you especially have added this to your CSV, with a column named 'type'. In the column type you can set simple or configurable. With my module that won`t be nessecary. By some logic I automatically recognize the simple products and create a new configurable containing those products.
A little explanation on why I need this:
The stock system of our client updates a list of product (CSV) every few hours, containing entries of products. They sell clothing, and every size, and every color is a new entry. So one product can have 10 entries, entry 1: t-shirt green, size 12; entry 2: t-shirt green, size 13, etc.
I explain this, just in case anybody would ever need something like this, my plugin will probably help you. It will although need a few modification for your situation, since this is very specific to how your list of products is composed.
Anyway, thanks for your help!
I want to maintain a database of all the products or the brands with respect to industry.
For example I need to get information about all the food supplements. How can I get them?
I am not sure all the companies have an API for their products.
Please advise
Uhm,... what kind of information? If you need prices, you can probably get information from goverment sources. At least you can here in Argentina. Other than that, I don't think it's possible, unless you somehow manage to scrape websites of all the brands you want to track.
Speaking as someone who has worked for two data-aggregation companies, aggregating data involves a lot of manual work. You find the sources, you automate the acquisition of data as best you can (APIs, file downloads and imports, even screen scraping from HTML pages), and you stay on top of it constantly. You're always looking for additional sources, updating code for sources that have changed, minding legal implications of sources who don't want you to harvest their data, etc.
Sometimes you have to buy the data, or weigh that cost against not having data from that source or scraping it manually. Sometimes a source will block you in some way and you need to either try to get around that or negotiate some terms with them. It's a viable business model, but it's not cheap.
For some products, Retailigence ( http://www.retailigence.com ) may have data in API form. They basically keep track of local stores' inventory and pricing for certain categories of products.
You should definitely check out Good Guide - an API that gives you access to details on over 60,000 household products.
http://developer.goodguide.com
DailyMed is a good service to check out if you're interested in products in the medical space.
http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed