Context
In 2021 we ran our own WooCommerce shop selling licences, which were also listed on eMAG Marketplace. We built a plugin for it that keeps the shop and the eMAG account in sync.
Until then, the shop had two catalogues to keep up to date: its own and the one inside eMAG. A price updated in one place stayed out of date in the other, stock dropped on eMAG and not in the shop, and orders arrived in one interface and were handled in another.
What had to stay in sync
- Offers and stock: sent from WooCommerce to eMAG without anyone touching them.
- Orders from eMAG: brought into the shop and handled like any other order, with waybills and courier accounts managed from the same place.
- The mapping: every product placed in the right category of the eMAG tree, with all of that category’s mandatory characteristics filled in, because without them the product does not appear on the marketplace.
- A log of every sync: when something does not go through, you can see why.
What we built
A WooCommerce plugin that talks to eMAG directly through the eMAG Marketplace API. It covers product offers, orders, categories, waybills, courier accounts, localities and VAT rates, and the data is checked before it is sent to eMAG.
In the admin panel we made the mapping screen: for each shop category you choose the eMAG category and the characteristic values, and your choices are saved without the page reloading. Syncing runs automatically at set intervals, in the background. Every run is written to the log, and errors raise an alert.