Bulk fetching of variant information in Shopify using multiple IDs

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1

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a Shopify project and I’m stuck. I need to grab the details for a bunch of product variants at once, especially their prices. These variants are part of an order.

I know how to get info for one variant:

GET /admin/variants/[variant_id].json

But doing this one by one for lots of variants feels slow and clunky. Is there a way to fetch details for multiple variants in one go? Like, can I pass a list of variant IDs and get all their info at once?

I’ve looked through the docs but can’t find anything. Maybe I’m missing something obvious? Any tips or tricks would be super helpful. Thanks!

2

I’ve dealt with this exact issue in a recent project. While the GraphQL approach is powerful, I found that using the Bulk Operations API was a game-changer for large-scale variant fetching. It’s perfect for when you’re dealing with thousands of variants across multiple products.

Here’s the gist:

  1. You create a bulk operation query that targets the variants you need.
  2. Submit the query to Shopify’s bulk operation endpoint.
  3. Shopify processes it asynchronously and gives you a URL to download the results.

It’s a bit more complex to set up initially, but it scales incredibly well. You can fetch data for tens of thousands of variants in one go, which is a massive time-saver for large stores or complex applications.

The downside is that it’s not real-time, so it might not be suitable if you need immediate data. But for most bulk operations, the slight delay is worth the efficiency gain.

3

While Alex’s suggestion is a good workaround, it might not be ideal if you’re dealing with variants from different products. Another approach you could consider is using the GraphQL API. It allows for more flexible querying and can fetch multiple variants in a single request. Here’s a basic query structure:

{
  nodes(ids: ["gid://shopify/ProductVariant/1234", "gid://shopify/ProductVariant/5678"]) {
    ... on ProductVariant {
      id
      price
      // other fields you need
    }
  }
}

This method is more efficient for bulk fetching variant data across products. It requires a bit more setup, but it’s worth it for performance gains when dealing with large datasets.

4

hey mike, i’ve run into this before. sadly there’s no bulk endpoint for variants :frowning: but you can grab multiple variants at once using the product endpoint. try:

GET /admin/products.json?ids=123,456,789

it’ll fetch all variants for those products. bit of a workaround but way faster than individual calls!