Custom Model for Stock Notifications: How to Notify?

[coderreco]

Working on a custom setup to allow customers to be notified when a product returns to in stock. Still planning but would like to implement this week.

As far as I have figured out so far:

1. Create a custom model called Stock Notifications
   Fields:

stock-notification:
  - product_id (Text): The ID of the product
  - variant_id (Text): The ID of the specific variant (if applicable)
  - email (Text): The customer's email address
  - created_at (Date): The date the subscription was created

2. Customer subscribes to a stock notification on the frontend, creates a new record in the stock-notification model
3. Create an API endpoint that will get periodically hit by a cron job. Endpoint checks stock levels and for stock-notification records that's products are now in stock.
4. Send email notifications to the subscribers.
5. Delete the records.

Sending the notifications is where I am looking for guidance. I have read the docs but have not yet created a custom notification in Swell and would love to be pushed in the right direction. If using conditions I imagine I would associate this with the product model, and when a record updates check the stock level for greater than 0? Or would it be easier just to use a webhook to the endpoint when a product.stock_adjusted event occurs, then use the id of that product to get stock-notification records, and trigger the notification manually using the emails from those stock-notification records?

Thanks in advance!

[logeshswell]

@coderreco This looks like an excellent Swell app idea. Do you want to try it?

Sending the notifications is where I am looking for guidance

https://developers.swell.is/guides/notifications

I would recommend following the below steps in addition to your thoughts:

1. Create a custom event (products.restocked) in stocks collection with the right conditions.
2. Trigger an async task (or webhook) when the above event is triggered from Swell.
3. Create a custom notification associated with stock-notification model and trigger an email using $notify operator inside your webhook implementation.

On a side note, add an additional field (unsubscribed) in stock-notification model to stop sending an email to unsubscribers.

These can be achieved easily via Swell apps. If you are interested, please check this out:
https://github.com/orgs/swellstores/discussions/458

[coderreco]

Would love to. Submitted a request to join the alpha a couple weeks ago but I haven't heard back.

[sags95]

Hey @coderreco, sending you a quick message now, looks like your store is on the Community plan. As Apps require a test environment we'll have to setup a new store for testing.

[coderreco]

Hey @sags95. The store that this will be implemented on is on another plan(Standard Plan I think?) so I can give you that store id instead

[sags95]

Yes that's correct, I can enable Apps access on any store that has the multi-environments feature. I sent you an email a few hours ago so feel free to contact me through there!

[coderreco]

Just saw! Will be in touch with store info soon!

Thanks @sags95