I’m working on a project where I need to fetch every single product that belongs to a specific Smart Collection in Shopify. I’ve been looking at the Shopify API documentation but I’m not sure about the most efficient approach to get all the products at once.
Should I be using a specific endpoint or do I need to make multiple requests? I want to make sure I don’t miss any products and that my code handles large collections properly. Has anyone dealt with this before and can share the best practice?
Been working with Shopify integrations for three years and learned this the hard way. The collection products endpoint works fine for smaller collections, but you’ll hit timeout issues once you reach thousands of products. Batch processing with proper error handling saved me - wrap your API calls in try-catch blocks and store progress after each successful batch. If a request fails halfway through, you can resume from where you left off instead of starting over. Smart Collections update their product membership based on rules, so timestamp your data pulls and consider running incremental updates rather than full syncs every time. API version matters too - newer versions have better pagination support.
I hit this exact issue last month building a product sync system. Smart Collections are dynamic, so don’t try getting a static list - use the products endpoint with proper filtering instead. I made requests to /admin/api/2023-10/products.json with the collection_id parameter, then used cursor-based pagination with the page_info values from response headers. This handles large datasets way better than traditional page-based pagination. Set your limit to 250 products per request for efficiency, and always check the X-Shopify-Shop-Api-Call-Limit header so you don’t hit rate limits. The cursor method won’t skip products if new ones get added while you’re paginating.
Smart Collections are tricky since they’re rule-based, not static. I use a two-step process to keep data clean: grab the collection metadata first to see its current state, then pull products through the REST API. Most developers miss this - collection rules change while you’re fetching data. Products can jump in or out based on inventory, tags, or price changes. I build a hash-based comparison system that stores a lightweight fingerprint of each product’s qualifying attributes. This catches when products move in or out between API calls. Also think about how often the collection updates when planning your sync. Collections that change a lot need real-time webhooks, not periodic polling.
Just dealt with this nightmare last week lol. The thing everyone’s missing - smart collections can change while you’re fetching data, so you need to handle that. I switched to GraphQL instead of REST since it’s way more efficient for bulk ops. Query the collection node with products connection and use first/after for pagination. GraphQL lets you grab only the fields you actually need, so you’re not wasting bandwidth.
To fetch all products from a specific Smart Collection in Shopify, utilize the endpoint /admin/api/2023-10/collections/{collection_id}/products.json. By default, this will return 50 products, and you can retrieve up to 250 per request. For larger collections, implement pagination using limit and page parameters to navigate through all entries. Be cautious of rate limits by introducing delays between your requests, especially when dealing with substantial amounts of data. If real-time data isn’t essential, consider caching results to reduce repeated API calls.