Spreadshirt Webservices API

Unofficial documentation for the spreadshop webservices API based on the SOAP protocol. Please note, this documentation is obsolete since the release of the new REST based API. The new official documentation is here http://wiki.developer.spreadshirt.net/

Firstly, if you've never heard of web services or SOAP or REST before, or if dealing with XML sounds daunting, then this documentation might be an uphill struggle for you. However, I do intend developing some customisable plugins/widgets later which should be of interest to non-progammers.

To save you time, let's get this out of the way first. If you were hoping that Spreadshirt's web services would allow you to create an application to create t-shirts on the fly like in their t-shirt designer then this is not the solution. Their web services are read-only in that respect.

Spreadshirt web services allows you to extract the information from your own Spreadshirt store in XML format which you can transform using a scripting language so you can display the information in any way you want. So, what does that mean? In practical terms this breaks down into two broad scenarios:

1. The main use is to create a shop entirely on your own domain (not in a frame) with entirely your own interface. This means you could build a shop using Flash or JavaScript to create a more interesting interface. It also means you could also make a mashup with another web service, such as Amazon, and sell products from both on the same page. Note that the last stage, checkout, is always carried out on Spreadshirt's servers for obvious security reasons.
2. The second use is for a blog or some site that isn't a shop but would like to have an interactive widget displaying your goods, for instance, in a sidebar, i.e. if you don't want to have a whole shop on your site. You could use AJAX or Flash to make a widget to display some of your products down along a column.

• Setting up the Flash shop requires setting up a simple proxy script to relay XML between Flash and the webservice.
• redeem_coupon does not work yet
• Articles do not contain list of available colors, if color is not fixed

Need to add section about the basket URL I found in the Flash movie.

• There is no real possibility to have the checkout happen within your system.
  • There is no method to handle the payment options or secure transactions.
  • There is no possibility to choose how the order should be dispatched.
  • There is no possibility to giftwrap.
  • There's no method to handle signing up to Spreadshirt.

The API reference is the an improved version of the API documents released by Spreadshirt. I've simply added details and noted errors. This is still a work in progress. Please help me to make this as complete and helpful a reference as possible.

I'm trying to gather together a number of sample applications both as illustrations to anyone who wants to use the services but also as starting points for your own projects.