Manage inventory

I’m not the only person who ever wanted to use Woocommerce to manage an inventory of only external products (all Amazon). And I believe that it isn’t necessary or even allowed by Amazon to display dynamic data (prices, images, reviews, ratings…) that did not originate from their Product Advertising API.

We do need a few things to populate a product category or archive page (titles, thumbnails, external_urls, ASINs). With the external_url you can direct the visitors to the Amazon product page without rendering the detail page locally, or access the Amazon API for details with the ASIN. Either way you’ll need a place for your affiliate credentials. These data bits, for the archive display are static, and can live in your Woocommerce CPTs, but everything else (price, images, descriptions, ratings, etc…) are dynamic and subject to change by Amazon, and wow’s me if you display an inaccurate value. These are only needed if you are rendering a product detail page locally (which happens, one product at a time). Having said that…

There is no reason to keep Amazon dynamic data in your database; that creates a need to maintain that data with daily updates in search of potential changes. There needs to be some way, call it what you will, that stops the single product rendering process, calls the Amazon Product Advertising API to fetch the details, populate the fields that are required, and continue with the rendering process in real-time, on-demand.

If you insist on maintaining that data in your Woocommerce data store, and not hit the API for the products that have been updated during the current day, then do that as the product are requested by your visitors, at the same time. I guess that way a product is only fetched once a day. That would add complexity, a check of the update date to compare with the current date, and only then continue the rendering or fetch from the API first. In my experience, simple and consistent is foolproof, and any additional complexity always leads to issues, but this could add additional efficiency.

Who volunteers to identify the method by which this can be done?
I’m not going to code it!! LOL
I probably could if I can find somewhere in the WordPress ecosystem, a single person that can explain the process of doing so in English!! Let’s hear it.
What I can gather about coding for this ecosystem is that no one knows how to (or wants to) explain anything to anyone who doesn’t know how. The only explanations that I can find are those that are required content to generate affiliate commissions for selling plugins, themes, and subscription. The entire WordPress ecosystem has become a 3-ring circus of carnival barkers. Any one willing to be altruistic and help out a WordPresser?

• This topic was modified 2 years, 12 months ago by charlesluck59. Reason: typos and more ideas
• This topic was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Jan Dembowski. Reason: Fixed the click bait topic title