Product Catalogs

Product Catalogs let you create and maintain WhatsApp Product Catalogs from inside Whatomate. Every catalog and product operation is a live round-trip to the Meta Graph API (Commerce Manager), with a local mirror kept in Whatomate's database for fast listing and display.

Caution

Scope: this feature is catalog management only. It creates, syncs, and edits catalogs and products in Meta Commerce Manager. It does not currently let you send products inside WhatsApp messages — see Sending products below.

How it works

Whatomate keeps a thin local mirror of your Meta catalogs and products:

• Catalogs store meta_catalog_id, name, the owning whatsapp_account, and is_active.
• Products store meta_product_id, name, description, price (in cents, an integer), currency (default USD), url, image_url, and retailer_id (your SKU).

Because the source of truth is Meta, mutating operations call Meta first and persist locally on success:

Operation	Meta call, then local
Create catalog	Creates the catalog in Meta, stores the returned meta_catalog_id.
Delete catalog	Deletes from Meta, then removes the catalog and its products locally.
Create / update / delete product	Round-trips to Meta, then mirrors the change locally.

Note

On delete, if the Meta call fails the local record is still removed so the mirror doesn't get stuck with orphaned rows. Create fails hard if Meta rejects it — nothing is stored locally in that case.

Managing catalogs

Catalogs are tied to a WhatsApp account by the account's name (the whatsapp_account field).

• GET /api/catalogs — list catalogs (optionally filtered by whatsapp_account). Each entry includes a live product_count.
• POST /api/catalogs — create a catalog ({ "name": "...", "whatsapp_account": "..." }).
• GET /api/catalogs/{id} — fetch one catalog with its products preloaded.
• DELETE /api/catalogs/{id} — delete the catalog (and its products).

Syncing from Meta

If catalogs already exist in Commerce Manager, pull them in instead of recreating:

POST /api/catalogs/sync
{ "whatsapp_account": "Support Line" }

Whatomate lists the account's catalogs from Meta and upserts by meta_catalog_id — new catalogs are created, existing ones have their name refreshed. The response reports how many were synced:

{ "status": "success", "data": { "message": "Catalogs synced", "synced": 3, "total": 3 } }

Managing products

Products live under a catalog:

• GET /api/catalogs/{id}/products — list products in a catalog.
• POST /api/catalogs/{id}/products — create a product. name and a positive price (in cents) are required; currency defaults to USD.
• GET /api/products/{id} — fetch one product.
• PUT /api/products/{id} — update a product.
• DELETE /api/products/{id} — delete a product.

Note

Prices are integers in the currency's minor unit — e.g. 1999 is $19.99. The retailer_id is your own SKU/identifier and is optional.

Sending products (not yet supported)

Caution

Products created here cannot currently be sent in WhatsApp messages. Whatomate's message sender supports interactive message types — reply buttons, list, call-to-action URL, click-to-call, and templates — but there is no product or product_list message type. Catalog and product data is managed and mirrored, but there is no message flow that attaches a product to an outgoing message. Treat this feature as catalog sync/management, not commerce messaging.

Access

Catalog endpoints are org-scoped and require an authenticated session or API key; every query is filtered to the caller's organization. There is no separate catalogs permission resource — access is governed by authentication and org membership rather than a dedicated resource:action grant.

API

Full request/response schemas are in the API Reference → Catalogs.