What is Shopping Cart REST API?
The eCommerce industry has grown consistently over the years, with more merchants creating online stores and many software providers developing tools to help automate business processes for online retailers.
If you provide eCommerce software, you know that in order to provide the functionalities of your product to online store owners, it is necessary to develop an integration with the shopping platforms on which the stores are built. Sooner or later, you will need to investigate how shopping cart REST APIs work and how to interact with them.
The more platforms your system integrates with, the higher the chances of covering most of the market. Though, more connections may also entail difficulties during the integration development process. It is, therefore, important to be aware of such pitfalls when developing a new integration.
In this article, you will learn about popular REST APIs of shopping carts and a unified API to access multiple eCommerce APIs at once.
What is a REST API?
A REST API is a web application programming interface that allows programmers to interact with a web service through HTTP requests and responses.
REST APIs enable different applications and components to communicate through a common set of web-based protocols and standards, promoting scalability, efficiency, flexibility, and interoperability.
At their core, REST APIs are based on the REST architectural style, which prescribes strict constraints on how data is transmitted between systems. REST APIs share data via standard requests and responses over HTTP protocols, making the implementation simple and easily accessible to users.
REST APIs allow you to perform standard database functions by sending HTTP requests to the server. For example, the HTTP GET method is used to retrieve data, the POST method is used to create one, the PUT method is used to update data, and the DELETE method is used to delete one. All standard HTTP methods can be used in API calls.
Various information can be sent to clients in formats such as HTML, XLT, Python, PHP, or plain text. JSON is most commonly used because it is both human- and machine-readable and language-agnostic.
What is Shopping Cart REST API?
The Shopping Cart REST API provides access to store-related information via a REST architectural style. This type of API allows developers to GET, ADD, UPDATE and DELETE information from online stores like orders, products, customers, categories, etc.
A shopping cart REST API integration is a process that enables the establishment of a connection between an application or software and an eCommerce platform. This allows software providers to offer online store owners a range of valuable features, including order and inventory management, product sync, customer management, etc.
Top 5 Shopping Cart REST APIs
Today, there are many eCommerce platforms that allow retailers to build online stores according to their requirements and capabilities. As a result, eCommerce software needs to integrate with as many shopping platforms as possible in order to be competitive and cover the needs of a large number of online merchants.
To help you understand how to build an integration with shopping platforms, we’ve gathered specific details about the REST APIs of several popular shopping cart solutions.
Magento REST API
The Magento REST APIs provide the ability to send requests and receive responses. All interactions with the API use the HTTP protocol. The API includes such elements as HTTP Headers, HTTP Verb, Endpoint, and Call Payload.
BigCommerce REST API
The BigCommerce REST API provides a uniform interface for easy work with data across the platform, such as orders, products, coupons, account data, etc.
OpenCart REST API
The OpenCart API provides a way for users to communicate with OpenCart stores in JSON format. The HTTP protocol is used to get and update data from OpenCart online stores.
WooCommerce REST API
WooCommerce is a platform that has a REST API and enables developers to work with related data to products, orders, categories, and more. The API allows developers to create, read, delete, or update such data. It also allows them to add and remove stocks, filter orders, and perform many other tasks.
Ecwid REST API
The Ecwid API can be used to access data related to store profiles, categories, products, etc. It also allows the connection of other applications in a way that makes them available as native features of the Ecwid app.
How to Develop Integration with Various Shopping Cart REST APIs
Integrating with a single shopping cart REST API can take time and effort. Integrating with multiple APIs is even more challenging.
As the number of APIs available for eCommerce applications increases, there is a need for developers to integrate them efficiently. As a result, the rise of API integration services and tools has occurred in response to this need.
API2Cart provides a single REST API to integrate with 40+ shopping platforms simultaneously, including such leaders as Wix, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, and others.
API2Cart provides over 100 API methods that enable you to retrieve, add, update, delete and sync data for customers and orders. It also takes care of all the connections, so you will not have to worry about upgrading your eCommerce integrations whenever any platform changes its API.
