# PSRESTful Blog

> Engineering and product blog for [PSRESTful](https://psrestful.com), a modern REST/JSON platform for the promotional products industry. PSRESTful translates the PromoStandards SOAP/XML web services (Inventory, Product Data, Pricing & Configuration, Order Status, Order Shipment Notification, Invoice) into clean, developer-friendly endpoints and adds cross-supplier features (search, normalized data, AI assists) that the underlying standard does not provide.

Audience: software engineers, distributors, and decision-makers building or buying integrations for the promotional products industry. Posts mix product announcements with implementation deep-dives and PromoStandards reference material.

Conventions used across this blog:

- "PromoStandards" refers to the industry-standard SOAP/XML web services published at promostandards.org.
- "PSRESTful" is the platform at psrestful.com (REST/JSON wrapper plus value-added services).
- "PromoSync" is the companion Shopify app at apps.shopify.com/promosync.
- The PSRESTful API uses the `x-api-key` header (not Bearer tokens). API docs live at docs.psrestful.com.

## Latest posts

- [A New, More Intuitive PromoSync: Redesigned Main Menu, Shop Overview, and Settings](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/promosync-new-ux-redesign): UX refresh for the PromoSync Shopify app. The dashboard is split into three surfaces: a main menu grouped into Product Management, Quick Sync, and PSRESTful Resources; a Shop Overview with a synced-product count and last-run row per background process; and a tabbed Shop Settings page with dedicated tabs for Notification Contacts, SEO Fields, Inventory Schedule, Supplier SKU Settings, Location Rules, and Tier Pricing Rules. Shipped alongside fresh docs for the three-step onboarding wizard, per-action bulk guides, and the Location Rules / Tier Pricing Rules tabs.
- [SanMar Now Requires Your Own Credentials on PSRESTful](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/sanmar-credentials-required-third-party-integrator): SanMar moved PSRESTful onto their Third-Party Services Provider agreement; PPC and Inventory for SanMar now return 403 ("add your SanMar credentials") for accounts without their own SanMar customer credentials. Product Data and Media are unaffected. Stock Check, Pricing Calculator, CSV Exporter, Data Validation, and Broken Links hide SanMar until credentials are configured; Product Search and Data Explorer keep SanMar visible but redact pricing/inventory columns.
- [AI Search, Image Search, and Category Filters Land in PSRESTful Product Search](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/ai-search-image-search-product-search): Product Search now offers three modes — keyword, AI Search (LLM extracts price/category/material/quantity filters from natural language and a vector search ranks the rest), and Image Search (drop a file, paste a URL, or take a photo on a phone). Results are scoped to the suppliers each account has access to.
- [Normalized Categories: One Filter for 'Polos' Across Every Supplier](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/normalized-categories-cross-supplier-search): Curated cross-supplier product taxonomy (11 categories, ~50 subcategories) with LLM-assisted classification, exposed via `GET /extra/v2/normalized-categories` and a `normalized_category_id` / `normalized_subcategory_id` filter on products. Wired into PSRESTful Product Search and PromoSync.
- [Stock Check: Real-Time Inventory Across 50+ Suppliers From One Dashboard](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/stock-check-real-time-inventory): Single dashboard for live PromoStandards inventory by warehouse, size, and color across every supported supplier.
- [Web Service Validator: Test PromoStandards Endpoints in Seconds](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/web-service-validator-test-promostandards-endpoints): Pre-filled tester for PromoStandards SOAP endpoints — change the product ID, hit send, see the parsed response.
- [Three-Week Sprint: New Homepage, Dark Mode, and Operations Dashboard](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/three-week-sprint-homepage-dark-mode-dashboard): Recap of a three-week shipping sprint: redesigned homepage, site-wide dark mode, Operations dashboard for procurement, Business plan tier, conversion-optimized landing pages.
- [Protocol Buffers for PromoStandards: 80%+ Smaller Payloads](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/protocol-buffers-faster-promostandards-integrations): PSRESTful is the only platform offering protobuf for PromoStandards APIs — 80% smaller than XML, 60% smaller than JSON.
- [Product Search Just Got a Whole Lot Better on PSRESTful](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/product-search-detail-page): Product Search detail page with tiered pricing (blank + decorated), locations and decorations, live inventory, and full API transparency via Data Explorer.

## Reference / evergreen

- [Why You Should Use PSRESTful in 2024](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/why-use-psrestful-in-2024): Business and engineering case for using PSRESTful instead of integrating PromoStandards SOAP services directly.
- [PromoStandards is Moving from SOAP/XML to REST/JSON](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/promostandards-moving-to-openapi-and-json): Industry-wide shift from SOAP to OpenAPI/REST/JSON, with payload-size data showing up to 53% reduction.
- [PSRESTful Press Release](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts/psrestful-press-release-launch): Original launch announcement for PSRESTful as a RESTful PromoStandards API for distributors.

## Discovery

- [Posts index (HTML)](https://blog.psrestful.com/posts)
- [RSS feed](https://blog.psrestful.com/rss.xml)
- [Sitemap](https://blog.psrestful.com/sitemap.xml)

## Related sites

- [psrestful.com](https://psrestful.com): Main product site, sign-up, dashboard, Product Search, Stock Check, Web Service Validator.
- [docs.psrestful.com](https://docs.psrestful.com): API reference (OpenAPI / Swagger).
- [apps.shopify.com/promosync](https://apps.shopify.com/promosync): PromoSync — Shopify app that syncs promotional products and inventory into Shopify stores using PSRESTful under the hood.
- [promostandards.org](https://promostandards.org): The PromoStandards industry consortium and underlying SOAP/XML specifications.