Building a Product Data Feed with the BigCommerce API and AWS

Problem

A client on BigCommerce wanted product badges, attribute indicators, and dynamic pricing in a permanent on-site UI. That data lived in BigCommerce but not in the page's data layer, and you can't call the API from the browser — so the front end had nothing to render from. Hard-coding was a non-starter: prices move, products come and go, and nobody wants to deploy just to change a price.

Approach

I wrote an AWS Lambda that calls the BigCommerce API every 15 minutes and saves the result as a JSON file shaped for exactly what the UI needs. The UIs serve to all traffic and, on load, read that file to render the badges, indicators, and pricing — so new products and price changes show up with no one touching the experience.

Notes

• The hard part wasn't the Lambda — it was shaping the JSON so the browser had almost nothing to do.
• A 15-minute refresh balanced staying current against hammering the API.
• Permanent UIs, not throwaway tests, meant being far more careful about edge cases.

Results

Both UIs are still live in the store's normal shopping flow — one feature that became something merchandising relies on. The trick was the payload: shape it right and the browser has nothing left to do.