Understanding product API differences: Marketplace vs. Catalog

Overview

The Marketplace Product APIs and the Product (Catalog) APIs in AppDirect provide different types of information. To leverage the capabilities of each you must understand the differences.

Marketplace Product APIs

Marketplace Product APIs provide marketplace-specific information about a product. These APIs are primarily read-only and offer insights into how a product is presented within a specific marketplace.

Content:

• Product Groups: Includes categories, attributes, and product lines specific to the marketplace.
• Visibility: Indicates whether the product is visible to regular users, if resellers can buy on behalf of others, and other visibility settings.
• Pricing and Subscription Configuration: Covers specific configurations for pricing, tax codes, and subscription management restrictions.
• Profile Content: Includes custom content for products syndicated from the network, where the profile has been modified in the local marketplace.

For more details, refer to the Marketplace Product APIs documentation.

Product (catalog) APIs

The Product (catalog) APIs address the raw catalog product information and support both read and write operations. This data remains consistent across all marketplaces where the product is listed.

Content:

• Core Product Information: The basic type of the product, usage model and stackability.
• Base Pricing and Contract Restrictions: Includes standard pricing and contract terms.
• Integration Configuration: How the product is fulfilled.

For more details, refer to the Product APIs documentation.

API Usage Differences

The Marketplace Product APIs provide marketplace-specific content of a product and the Product APIs offer standard data that is universal across different marketplaces. This distinction enables the same product to be distributed to multiple marketplaces. Each marketplace can list and sell the product according to their own criteria.

For more information on product model, refer to the Product Model Guide.

Use Cases for each API

Using Marketplace Product APIs

• Discovering Products for Purchase: To search for products available in a specific marketplace.
• Viewing and Configuring Marketplace Settings: To understand how a product is categorized, its visibility settings, or specific pricing and subscription configurations within a particular marketplace.

Using Product APIs

• Creating New Products: To add new products.
• Updating Product Content: To update the product profile, including details like base pricing, product type, and contract restrictions.
• Managing Integration Configurations: To configure or modify integration settings that will apply across all marketplaces.

Using Both Product and Marketplace Product APIs

For scenarios where you need to use both Catalog and Marketplace Product APIs, such as when publishing and listing a product.

Publishing and Listing a Product:

• Step 1: Publication API: First, use the Trigger Publication API, a Product API, to create a published copy of the product. This ensures that a stable version of the product is available, separate from the working copy where changes are made until ready for commit.

• Step 2: Marketplace Settings API: Next, use the Marketplace Settings API to configure how the product will be listed in the marketplace, including setting categories, visibility, subscription restrictions, tax codes, etc.

To see how the end to end flow behaves see the Publish and add to marketplace guide.