Sync products between Airtable and WooCommerce

This code syncs products stored in an Airtable with WooCommerce.

Why Airtable?

The ultimate goal is to sync product data between ePosNow and WooCommerce so that live stock levels are reflected in WooCommerce. Using Airtable as an intermediary allows to add things like descriptions and photos to products, map ePosNow and WooCommerce categories and specify which products should be visible on the website. Besides it enables bulk editing and can be used a datasource for other purposes (e.g. other apps or 3rd parties).

Airtable Schema

Products

Name	Type	Comment
name	string
variant	string	Variation name
short_description	text
long_description	text
price	decimal	Price per unit, as in ePosNow (e.g. per g)
images	attachments
cup_weight	integer	Weight of 1 cup of product
display_price_quantity	integer	Quantity of product for the price displayed on the site (e.g. 100g)
category	Category
enabled	boolean	Display product on the site?
eposnow_name	string
eposnow_category	string	Used for initial mapping
woocommerce_id	string	ID of the product in WooCommerce
woocommerce_parent_id	string	ID of the parent product in WooCommerce (only applicable to variants)
woocommerce_name	string	Used for initial mapping
woocommerce_categories	string	Used for initial mapping
last_sync_data	text	Snapshot of the data at the most recent synchronisation in JSON

Categories

Name	Type	Comment
name	string
image	attachment
parent	string	Name of the parent category
woocommerce_id	string
woocommerce_name	string	Used for the initial mapping
eposnow_name	string	Used for the initial mapping

How it works

This code is written in Ruby. It uses Airtable and WooCommerce APIs to get and update records. It is deployed as AWS Lambda functions (defined in handler.rb) managed using Serverless framework:

• sync_products: Executed on a schedule, checks which products require sync and triggers the other two functions
• sync_simple_product: Syncs a simple product
• sync_variable_product: Syncs a variable product

It stores a snapshot of the data in a separate column on Airtable (last_sync_data) on every sync so that it's possible to tell if a record requires synchronisation: if the data differs from the snapshot then it has been updated since the most recent sync and needs to be synchronised again.

Setup

Run make setup and add credentials to the file called .env. These are available as environment variables for the code in all stages.

Development

Two binstubs are available to help with development:

• bin/run: run a command agains a Ruby docker image, e.g. bin/run bundle
• bin/serverless: run serverless via docker, e.g. bin/serverless info

Run all tests with make test or indidually with bin/run ruby test/path_to_test.rb

Deployment

Run make deploy to deploy the code to AWS.