DEV Community: PSRESTful

Stock Check: Real-Time Inventory Across 50+ Suppliers From One Dashboard

PSRESTful — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:05:47 +0000

A customer calls. They want 500 units of a specific polo in royal blue, size Large. You need to know if it's available — not tomorrow, not after a callback, right now.

Before Stock Check, answering that question meant logging into a supplier portal (or two, or five), navigating to their inventory page, and hoping the data was current. For some suppliers, it meant

picking up the phone. Multiply that across a product search with multiple supplier options and you've burned thirty minutes before you can even quote the order.

What Stock Check Does

Stock Check gives your team instant visibility into supplier inventory, broken down by:

Warehouse location — see exactly which warehouses have stock and in what quantities
Size — confirm availability for every size in the range
Color — pick a color variant and get the full inventory picture

All from a single dashboard, across every PromoStandards supplier that supports the Inventory service.

How It Works

The workflow is three steps:

Select a supplier from any that supports PromoStandards Inventory
Search for a product by name or SKU — browse results with images, color counts, and size ranges

Pick a color and see the full inventory grid: every size, every warehouse, with total quantities, stock status, and last-updated timestamps

No SOAP envelopes. No XML parsing. No supplier-specific portal logins. Just search, click, and see what's available.

Six Reasons Your Team Needs This

Answer "Is it in stock?" instantly

Sales reps and customer support can check real-time inventory without calling the supplier or logging into their portal. Faster answers mean faster sales.

Warehouse-level visibility

Ship from the closest location for fastest delivery, or find the warehouse that can fulfill a large order. You see the exact quantities at each warehouse — not just a single aggregate number.

Size and color breakdown

Confirm exact availability by size and color before promising delivery. No more overselling XLs that are out of stock while Mediums sit in the warehouse.

Multi-supplier, one interface

Check inventory across SanMar, S&S Activewear, Hit Promotional, and 50+ other PromoStandards suppliers from a single dashboard. No more juggling portals.

Bypass cache for critical orders

When a big order is on the line, toggle bypass cache to query the supplier directly for the freshest inventory data possible. For routine lookups, cached data keeps things fast.

Empower your whole team

Customer Support users get direct access to inventory data, reducing bottlenecks. They can answer client questions in real-time during calls instead of promising callbacks.

Who Is This For?

Sales reps — You're on a call and the client wants to know if 1,000 units are available in navy. Open Stock Check, search the product, pick the color, and give them the answer before they finish their
sentence.

Customer support — A client emails asking about availability across multiple sizes. Instead of forwarding to the sales team or calling the supplier, check it yourself and reply in minutes.

Operations teams — You're planning a large fulfillment and need to know which warehouse can cover the full order. The warehouse-level breakdown tells you exactly where to source from.

Try It

Stock Check is available to PSRESTful users on the Standard plan and above. If you're already on the platform, you'll find it in your dashboard under Stock Check. If you're new, get in

touch and we'll get you set up.

For the full feature breakdown, visit the Stock Check landing page.

Web Service Validator: Test PromoStandards Endpoints in Seconds, Not Hours

PSRESTful — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 22:07:22 +0000

If you work with PromoStandards integrations, you know the drill. You need to test a supplier's SOAP endpoint. The PromoStandards web service validator exists and it works — but before you can send a single request, you need to answer a few questions:

Where is the endpoint URL?
What are my credentials?
What does the SOAP envelope look like for this service and version?
Did I get the XML namespaces right?

By the time you've tracked all of that down, what should have been a two-minute test has turned into a thirty-minute scavenger hunt through emails, Slack threads, and old documentation.

Everything Is Prefilled

That's the core difference with PSRESTful's Web Service Validator. When you select a supplier from the dropdown, the tool already knows:

The endpoint URL — resolved automatically for each service and version
Your credentials — stored securely and applied per supplier
The SOAP envelope — auto-generated with correct namespaces, ready to send

The only thing you typically need to change is the product ID. Select your supplier, pick the service (Product Data, Inventory, Order Status, etc.), and hit send. That's it.

No hunting. No copy-pasting from old integration tickets. No debugging malformed XML because you forgot a namespace.

Five Ways to Read the Response

Raw SOAP XML is hard to scan. The Web Service Validator gives you five tabs to view every response:

XML — The raw SOAP response with syntax highlighting, useful for debugging at the protocol level
JSON — The same data as typed JSON, matching exactly what PSRESTful's REST API returns
Protobuf — Binary Protocol Buffers format for maximum efficiency
Human — Nested, readable tables designed for non-technical stakeholders
Stats — Side-by-side format comparison with visual size charts

The Stats Tell the Story

The Stats tab is where things get interesting. For a typical getProduct response from SanMar:

Format	Size	vs XML
XML	9.2 KB	100%
JSON	5.0 KB	55%
Protobuf	2.0 KB	21%

That's not a contrived benchmark — it's a real response from a real supplier. Protobuf delivers the same data at 21% the size of XML and 39% the size of JSON. For high-volume integrations pulling inventory or product data across hundreds of SKUs, those savings compound fast.

Who Is This For?

Distributors — You're onboarding a new supplier or troubleshooting why product data looks wrong. Instead of filing a support ticket and waiting, open the validator, pick the supplier, and see exactly what their endpoint returns. Right now.

Developers — You're building or maintaining a PromoStandards integration. Skip the manual XML crafting. Test any service, any version, any operation — and compare the response in JSON or Protobuf to decide which format fits your architecture.

Suppliers — You've updated your PromoStandards implementation and need to verify it's working. The validator hits your endpoint the same way any distributor would, so you can catch issues before your partners do.

Try It

The Web Service Validator is available to all PSRESTful users. If you're already on the platform, you'll find it in your dashboard. If you're new, you can get started here.

For the full feature breakdown, check out the Web Service Validator landing page.

Three-Week Sprint: New Homepage, Dark Mode, and Operations Dashboard

PSRESTful — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 03:40:18 +0000

The last three weeks at PSRESTful have been intense. 158 commits, three major features, and a handful of smaller wins that add up to a significantly better platform. Here's what shipped.

A Completely Redesigned Homepage

The old homepage served us well, but it didn't reflect where the product is today. The new design features a dark gradient hero section, a restructured layout that leads with what PSRESTful does, and an updated
features grid highlighting Product Search, the Web Service Validator, and our other tools.

The pricing cards got a refresh too — cleaner typography, clearer tier differentiation, and a new Business plan tier (more on that below).

Site-Wide Dark Mode

Dark mode isn't just a nice-to-have anymore — it's table stakes. We implemented comprehensive dark mode support across the entire platform: every page, every component, every form, every data table.

The Data Explorer, landing pages, and documentation sections all received dedicated dark/light template variants. It's not a CSS filter hack — each view was designed to look right in both modes.

Operations Dashboard: Procurement Management

For teams managing purchase orders across multiple suppliers, we've added a new Operations section to the dashboard. This is the beginning of a procurement management suite that gives you visibility into your PO workflow.

The dashboard includes role-based access controls, so you can define who on your team can view, create, or approve orders.

Conversion-Optimized Landing Pages

Every major feature now has its own landing page: Brand List & Detail, Supplier Detail (with auth-aware views), Discount Codes, Broken Links Checker, Media Downloader, and Supplier Magento/Shopify integration pages.

Color Normalization System

Suppliers describe colors inconsistently — "Royal", "Royal Blue", "RoyalBlue", "#4169E1" can all mean the same thing. Our new color normalization engine introduces canonical colors, per-supplier mappings, and automatic matching — powering more accurate search and better data quality.

Web Service Validator Enhancements

The Web Service Validator got psdomain model parsing, Protobuf support, tooltips, toast notifications, copy-to-clipboard, and a media normalizer for supplier image URLs.

What's Next

The Operations dashboard will expand with more procurement features, and we're continuing to invest in data quality tools like color normalization.

Visit PSRESTful.com to see the new homepage. Questions? Reach out.

Protocol Buffers for PromoStandards: 80%+ Smaller Payloads, No One Else Does This

PSRESTful — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:40:27 +0000

Protocol Buffers for PromoStandards: 80%+ Smaller Payloads, No One Else Does This

If you're a developer at a promotional products distributor, you know the pain: syncing inventory and pricing across hundreds of suppliers means thousands of API calls per hour. Every byte matters. Every millisecond counts.

Today we're announcing Protocol Buffers (protobuf) support in PSRESTful — making it the only platform in the promotional industry that offers this format for PromoStandards APIs.

What Are Protocol Buffers?

Protocol Buffers are Google's language-neutral, platform-neutral mechanism for serializing structured data. They're what powers communication between services at Google, Netflix, and most high-scale tech companies. Unlike JSON (text-based), protobuf is a binary format — compact, fast to serialize/deserialize, and schema-enforced.

If you've worked with gRPC, you already know protobuf. If not, here's what matters: same data, dramatically smaller wire size, faster parsing.

The Numbers: XML vs JSON vs Protobuf

We've already shown that moving from XML to JSON reduces payloads by 35-53%. Protobuf takes this further:

Format	Inventory (46 colors, 8 sizes)	Product Pricing	Relative Size
XML	5.1 KB	992 KB	100%
JSON	2.4 KB	607 KB	~50%
Protobuf	~0.9 KB	~150 KB	~15-20%

Protobuf payloads are 80-85% smaller than XML and 60-75% smaller than JSON. For a distributor making 50,000+ API calls per day, that's a massive reduction in bandwidth, parsing time, and infrastructure cost.

Why This Matters for Your Business

This isn't just a developer optimization. It's a business advantage:

Faster inventory sync — When a hot product is selling out, your system gets the update quicker. Protobuf responses parse in microseconds, not milliseconds. That means your website shows accurate stock levels before your competitor's site even finishes processing the JSON.
Faster pricing updates — Product Pricing and Configuration is the heaviest PromoStandards payload. Reducing 607 KB (JSON) to ~150 KB (protobuf) means your pricing engine stays in sync with suppliers in near real-time.
Lower infrastructure costs — Less bandwidth, less CPU time parsing responses, less memory. If you're running at scale, this translates to real savings on your cloud bill.
More reliable at high volume — Smaller payloads mean fewer timeouts, fewer retries, and more headroom before you need to scale your infrastructure.

Protobuf + Caching: The Compound Effect

Here's where it gets interesting. PSRESTful already provides intelligent caching that dramatically reduces response times for frequently accessed data. When you combine protobuf with caching, the effects compound:

First call: PSRESTful fetches from the supplier's SOAP/XML endpoint, translates, caches, and returns protobuf — already much smaller than raw XML
Subsequent calls: Response comes directly from cache in protobuf format — sub-10ms response times with minimal payload

For inventory polling scenarios — where you're checking the same suppliers repeatedly throughout the day — this combination means you're getting cached binary responses instead of waiting for XML round-trips. The speed difference is not incremental; it's transformational.

How to Use It

If you're already using PSRESTful, adding protobuf support is straightforward. Set the Accept header to application/x-protobuf in your API calls:

curl -H "Accept: application/x-protobuf" \
     -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
     https://api.psrestful.com/v2.0.0/suppliers/SS/inventory/3501

The .proto schema definitions are available at github.com/GallardoSolutions/psdomain. You can use them to generate client code in any protobuf-supported language — Python, JavaScript, Java, C#, Go, Ruby, PHP, and more.

JSON remains the default and continues to work exactly as before. Protobuf is an opt-in upgrade for teams that need maximum performance.

Who Should Switch?

Protobuf is ideal if you:

Make high volumes of API calls (10,000+/day)
Run background sync jobs for inventory or pricing
Build mobile apps where bandwidth is constrained
Operate in latency-sensitive environments (real-time quoting, live inventory displays)

JSON is still great if you:

Are getting started with PromoStandards integrations
Need human-readable responses for debugging
Have lower API volume where the overhead difference is negligible

No One Else Does This

Let's be direct: no other platform in the promotional products industry supports Protocol Buffers for PromoStandards APIs. This is new territory. While the industry has been discussing the move from SOAP/XML to REST/JSON, we've already gone a step further — offering a binary format used by the world's highest-scale systems.

The promotional industry processes billions of dollars in transactions. The technology infrastructure should match that scale. We think protobuf is a meaningful step in that direction.

Try It Today

Protobuf support is available now on all PSRESTful plans. Visit PSRESTful.com to get started, or check the API documentation for integration details.

Have questions? Want to benchmark protobuf vs JSON for your specific use case? Reach out — we'd love to help you optimize your integration.