October 31, 2023In this article, we’re making TikTok Shop API easy. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, our goal is to simplify the process, so you can smoothly integrate TikTok Shop into your projects without any hassle. We’ll guide you step by step to enhance your social commerce experience.
How To Get Started With TikTok Shop API
To start using the TikTok Shop API you will need to first register at their partner portal, now they have 2 partner portals. Us partner portal and Global partner portal. There is a lot of confusion around which partner portal one needs to sign up for, so there are 3 different scenarios, lets go through them one by one.
First scenario is if you are a US-registered company who wants to target only us US based Tiktok shops you can simply signup at Tiktok US partner portal and you are good to go.
Second scenario is if you are US registered company who also wants to target NON US Tiktok shop you need to also create a separate account at Global partner portal.
Third Scenario is if you a non US registered company who wants to target US tiktok shops + all other tiktok shops of any country you simply need to singup at Global partner portal.
Submit Business Information
Now once you are signed up just login into the portal & click on Get Started. select the region in which your business is registered (Remember you can only select this field once you have selected this you won’t be able to change it later on) and target market you are want to build integration for.
While selecting business category select the relevant business category for which you want to build integrations for.
Note if you are a inhouse developer of a Tiktok shop owner then select the option Seller inhouse developer > Tiktok Shop Seller & verify with your Tiktok shop admin email. Upon sucessfull verification your partner account will get approved right away. For other business categories you will need to other documents as well.
Submit all documents requested by the portal and submit. Once you have submitted all the details it takes around 2-3 business days to get approved.
Create Application
Once you are approved you will be able to see a new menu item appeared in your portal named App & Service. You need to click on that menu and you need to click on Create app & service.
Select The Correct App Type
Now basically you can create two types of app depending on your need.
1. Public app – If you want to develop an app that you wish to publish on Tiktok shop app store.
2. Custom app – If you want to develop an app that you don’t want to publish to Tiktok shop app store but still you will be able to distribute it to individual sellers without any restrictions.
It is important to note that both the application types uses same method of Authentication which is OAuth 2.0 and you get the same level of API access using both types of apps. Select the app type after that you will have to enter the basic app details like app name, category , logo and target maket and seller types.
After entering all those details enter the Redirect URL & the webhooks url if you want to receive webhook notifications in your integration.Then submit the app creation form.
Setup And Apply Proper API Permissions
Once you have created the app you will get the credentials that you typically get while creating a OAuth2.0 app like your App ID and app secret token.
So now we are done with our App creation process. Now you can start making API calls to Tiktok shop but before you start making API calls you need to perform one additional step and that is to Apply for data permissions your app will need.
So click on Manage API and apply for necessary API premissions relevant to what integration you are building.
Start Testing API
To start testing out the API, you can simply click on Development kits & then click on the API testing tool.
And there you can select the endpoint you want to test and in App Key selector select the Use Platform App Key, it will allow you to play with API endpoints with Mock data and using this you can start developing your integration.
Tiktok Shop API Rate Limitations
Now lets talk about the API rate limitations that Tiktok Shop API imposes
You can make 50 API requests within 1 second to Tiktok Shop API and this limit is separate for Separate Stores, that means if your Tiktok APi app is connected to 5 different your app can make 50 API calls per store per second.
In the same way if a Tiktok Store is connected to 5 different apps can make 50 API calls per store per second. individually to that store.
Conclusion
In case if you need any help building your integration or you need professional consultation about developing any Tiktok Shop Integration please do visit our website https://constacloud.com/ or contact us by sending us email on help@constacloud.in
We have 12+ years of experience in developing API integrations and have worked with 300+ different companies around the world.
