I came across this Draft documentation for a REST API for Volusion stores. Does anyone know the status of the API?
Whenever I call it using any of the listed example calls, I get an error:
An error has occurred. Please try your request again, or contact customer service for >assistance. Thank you. Please provide Reference #000000 if contacting customer service.
I've seen other people getting the same and mentions of it not being in production yet. However I've been unable to locate any information on when it will actually go live and be usable. Anyone have any more info?
Sorry I guess the way I answered this wasn't much of an answer, so I'll try to give you a better response. While the simple answer is the status of this is, that it is "for internal testing use only" for anyone who is desperately searching thinking they will find a different answer, here is everything I know about it.
The API which is documented on the apiary.io site, is possibly going to be the next incantation of volusions software, (or at least I along with many others are hoping so). It was published sometime near the end of 2014, on the apiary website, and included documentation about how to use it, along with a link to the git repository for their new theming engine. It is an e-commerce shopping cart software in a box solution, which is when released if released, is going to be a fully open source solution, and allow users to perform a much higher level of customization to their stores than the current version of the software does.
The curious among us can see a sample site built with the new software at http://www.samplestore.io/
It was initially announced to the general public in a "letter from the ceo" which was sent out in Jan 2014, of which you can read the excerpt below: Here are two key product themes that will be at the forefront this year:
Brand Experience: To help you take full control of your brand, we’re introducing a new theming engine that provides endless customization to your storefront. These themes will support fully responsive design, and are completely customizable, allowing you to create customer experiences that represent your brand beautifully on any device. Extensibility: We’ll be unveiling a new Volusion App Marketplace, giving you access to numerous partners and capabilities to expand the power of your store. Even more, we’ll be releasing a new Volusion API, which will be fully RESTful, documented and available for anyone to use. To many users this is a very much anticipated change, that will likely be one of the only things that is able to plug the flow of customers leaving volusion for other services, as their current software is not just ripe with bugs, it's also based on classic asp, and is only able to be customized through their current api which is a web-service api running on asp.net (which is interesting being as the software doesn't support.net)
Another key difference between the new software that they are building, and the current version is that the current versions theming engine uses some very odd proprietary methods, utilizing tables much more heavily than any CSS, and while CSS is used and able to be purposed, by more advanced users, to the average user, it's a very clunky solution. The current solution just recently (within the last few months) began supporting responsive designs using bootstrap.
The new API, will go along with the new theme engine, which will be a much more versatile engine, also opensource, which will allow customers to create a much more usable and personalized experience. This new theme engine is called method at present.
So from what I understand, and from what I see, Volusion has developed a new advanced API which is open source, and it will be accessible through the REST API, and will grant a user the ability to accept and respond with standard JSON formats. This means that things that currently are only able to be accessed by basically backdoor their current API, will now be available publicly to all, and apparently supported. I like everyone else am very excited about what this means, the only problem is, that they announced this way back in 2014. It's now September of 15.
In June of 2014, my contacts in volusion told me that it would be available publically no later than december of that year. Amazingly, December rolled around and I heard nothing, A few months later I received an email inviting me to "volusion API documentation" on apiary. I gladly joined the site and got to work, and set some of the best guys on my team to work on it as well. Well, eventually we ended up creating a new theme for a website off of it, and it was time to implement, so after some testing we found that the things that were available on the samplestore.io site could not be accessed on ours.
After spending hundreds of hours learning, and developing, and testing, on this new engine, and then spending many more hours trying to get a straight answer from volusion, I eventually spoke with one of the account managers in the experts program and explained to him that I was so frustrated, that I would be pulling my business from volusion along with any of my clients unless I had a solid answer. A ticket was opened, and a few hours later, the response I received I was told that the API was mistakenly made available to the public, and regardless of the invite I had received it was not for volusion customers yet, nor for their partners or experts, and that it was only meant for internal testing use only. As to when it is going to be available, I was told "hopefully sometime in the first half of 2016."
Honestly the whole fiasco makes me wonder if we are all asking the wrong question, maybe we shouldn't be asking the status of their new API, but asking the status of them as a company. I know that we are currently building a custom cloud based solution that is much more scalable and will allow us to have the customization we need. Unfortunately that isn't an option to many people who joined volusion with the expectation of having access to an API such as this, as even as early as 2013 there were talks of making an opensource api, and that it would only be a "matter of time."
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but as of now I've lost faith that we will have access to this anytime soon, however, I'll be sure to come and update you if I here anything different, as I've followed this closely for quite a long time, and I'm on a supposed "beta group" waiting list...
For anyone who wants more information on it all, here are a few links: http://www.volusion.com/lp/sem/new-upcoming-features/v1
http://volusion-angular.github.io/theme-engine-docs/devcenter/Content/landing.html -- Taken down a month or so back (I did fork this prior to it being removed, but there isn't anything of much use, as the API doesn't work... http://docs.volusion.apiary.io/ -- Also taken down
And to find info as to what Volusion CURRENTLY has available as far as an API goes, you can start off here but it'll probably take much more research if you really wish to learn to use it.
I wish you luck, but on a personal note, I wouldn't get my hopes up. I could be wrong, and maybe they're just waiting until this technology is outdated to begin using it as that seems to be V's MO.