How to use the API to sync Channel Advisor inventory with BigCommerce inventory

[Douglas Kuhn]

Our situation is this:

We have a channel advisor account which we use for helping us sync with other main stream eCommerce retail channels (eBay, Amazon, New Egg, etc.) and assist us in managing the inventory so we don't oversell.   

Recently, we have been getting more and more traffic to our main website ( www.etekdepot.com ) and generating sales of our products through our own site.  The issue is that our inventory is always out of sync because while channel advisor monitors and adjusts our inventory for the main stream eCommerce retail channels so that when we make a sale on eBay for example our inventory in channel advisor recognizes the sale and deducts the appropriate number of items sold from our inventory within channel advisor for a sale generated in the main stream eCommerce retail channels.   

This is not set up for our own hosted site on Big Commerce.   But would like to sync this as well.   I did some homework on the Channel Advisor  API and was able to obtain our username, API url and the API key itself in hopes to implement this on our own, however, we are finding very little tutorials and source material that gives clear instructions on how to do this.

Any advise or direction on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Doug.

[[ChannelAdvisor] Marshall McClure]

Hi Doug,

Which of our APIs do you intend to use: REST or SOAP?  Have you had a chance to read the documentation?  If so, what information is lacking that you feel you need in order to build your API integration?

The ChannelAdvisor platform offers full support for Big Commerce stores, so configuring your ChannelAdvisor account to integrate with your store should also be an option, which seemingly would eliminate the need for you to create an API integration.

Regards,
Marshall

[Douglas Kuhn]

Hello Marshall,

REST or SOAP?

Most likely REST API

Have you had a chance to read the documentation?

I have read enough to asertain our username, API url and the API Key which I am fairly certain I need to sync the inventory data between Channel Advisor and BigCommerce.

If so, what information is lacking that you feel you need in order to build your API integration?

Well, examples of the actual processes of monitoring and automatically adjusting inventory, source code (even Pseudo code), a video tutorial would be nice but I would settle just for clear instruction on how to do this.

The ChannelAdvisor platform offers full support for Big Commerce stores, so configuring your ChannelAdvisor account to integrate with your store should also be an option, which seemingly would eliminate the need for you to create an API integration.

That's great, during my initial investigations when I contacted ChannelAdvisor, they mentioned in their email to me that in order to do the integration themselves on our behalf we would need to subscribe to a Webstore Amplifer contract, which is great, but we would prefer to do this implementation ourselves, so we will have a solid understanding on the methods we need to know.   We just need some direction on how this is done.

Thanks,

Doug

[[ChannelAdvisor] Marshall McClure]

The documentation lists all the endpoints and properties you will need to use in order to retrieve and update product data, and it also contains examples for performing those actions.  The use cases employed by our clients and the platforms they use to connect to us are so varied that any code or pseudo code we might provide would be useful to only a small fraction of them.  Your business processes are your own, and we cannot dictate or make assumptions about what they might look like.

Assuming you already have developer credentials and have set up your application and integration, you can get an access token from the token endpoint and then submit requests for whatever you need to do.  It sounds like you will mostly or entirely focus on submitting either PUT/PATH requests to the /Products/DCQuantities endpoint or POST requests to the /Products/UpdateQuantity endpoint.

M