Enabling product sync

The following are the primary APIs you can use to build product sync.

The primary APIs you should use are the GraphQL and REST Admin APIs, specifically the REST Admin API's ProductListing resource. This resource only returns the products published to your channel app instead of all products on the merchant’s shop.

When the merchant first installs your channel app, you can use this API to fetch all products and perform the initial sync with your database.

Your channel app requires the following access scopes:

• read_product_listings

You can also perform a bulk operation query on the GraphQL Admin API's currentAppInstallation common object query. For example, you can ask for the products connection on the Publication object.

The query could look something like the following:

You can also use the Storefront API to retrieve information about a product, specifically the Product APIs.

Querying the Products object will return a list of products that a merchant has published to your channel app.

Querying the ProductVariant object will return additional product details.

Your channel app requires the following access scopes:

• unauthenticated_read_product_listings

It's important to consider rate limits when you decide how to build your product sync. The Storefront API is rate-limited by buyer IP address and returns product information that's represented on a merchant's storefront. This is a great way to retrieve real-time information about products from your buyer experience.

The REST Admin API's rate limit is calculated differently and isn't intended to be used from your buyer experience. A merchant's storefront products are represented by the ProductListing resource, which can be called directly from your channel app or, more commonly, sent using webhooks and saved to your custom service.

Subscribing to webhooks is essential to doing product sync correctly.

You can subscribe to HTTPS webhooks using either the GraphQL Admin API or the REST Admin API. The following are some useful webhook topics, which share only the updates to products that are published to your channel app.

• product_listings/add

• product_listings/remove

• product_listings/update

For supported topics, refer to the GraphQL Admin API and REST Admin API webhook reference pages.

By using the APIs and webhooks, you can maintain your own datastore of all the products available to the marketplace.

• You can have a checkpoint DateTime stored on your end that will indicate the last time products were synced. Any products that have been updated in Shopify after this time will need to be synced to your datastore.

• You can query specifically for products with updated_at times that are past your checkpoint DateTime, to reduce the query cost and obtain only the products that you need to update on your end.

• You can use the REST Admin API for an initial product sync, and then subscribe to the appropriate webhooks to ensure any updates to products are synced with your channel app.

• You can re-query the REST Admin API using the product_listings/update webhook or the bulk queries to ensure products on your end are kept up to date.

• Learn how to surface additional product and purchase information in the context of a marketplace.

• Share feedback on Marketplace Kit.