Get item category taxonomy by spec version

To better position your items within categories, use the Taxonomy by spec API to view the category taxonomy available on Walmart.com for a specific feedType and spec version.

You can specify an item spec version and get the category hierarchy for that particular schema. Use the returned categories to decide which category to position your product.

As a seller, you can decide where to place your products within Walmart categories for each item spec available. These are the latest versions:

Walmart Item spec – feedType=MP_ITEM, version 4.2
Walmart and WFS item spec – feedType=MP_WFS_ITEM, version 4.1
Item update spec – feedType=MP_MAINTENANCE, version 4.1

The response provides the item taxonomy of categories and sub-categories in the hierarchy for the spec version you specified in the request.

The taxonomy API supports all versions of item feeds. To get more information about the latest individual item specs available, see Item spec v4.

Get all item categories by item spec version

To get the item category taxonomy for the item spec you are using, call the Taxonomy by spec API.

Specify the feedType that corresponds to the Item spec that you ingest your items with the Item setup process:

feedType=MP_ITEM&version=4.2
feedType=MP_MAINTENANCE&version=4.1
feedType=MP_WFS_ITEM&version=4.1

NOTE: If you do not pass in a feedType, the response returns Item Spec v3.2 categories by default.

The response includes IDs and Names for all item categories and sub-categories for that Item spec.

For example, to get all categories for MP_ITEM feedType version 4.0, call

/v3/utilities/taxonomy?feedType=MP_ITEM&version=4.2

Upon success, the response returns a list of Category Names and IDs. Here is a brief example with two entries:

{ “success”: “SUCCESS”, “payload”: [ { “categoryName”: “Animal Accessories”, “categoryId”: “animal_accessories” }, { “categoryName”: “Animal Food”, “categoryId”: “animal_food” }, ] }

To see an entire payload response sample, see Taxonomy by spec in the API Reference.

API platform status

API Platform Status APIs aim to provide a comprehensive view of Walmart’s API health. These APIs help sellers quickly triage issues while interacting with Walmart APIs. The JSON responses for each API call return the operational health status for each API queried. Below is a code example of a JSON response for an API call.

{ apiStatuses : [ { "apiGroup": "Returns", "status": "OPERATIONAL", "lastUpdatedTime": "2022-01-06T12:30:39.884Z" }, { "apiGroup": "Authorization", "status": "SERVICE_DEGRADATION", "lastUpdatedTime": "2022-01-06T12:30:39.884Z" }, { "apiGroup": "Promos", "status": "SERVICE_OUTAGE", "lastUpdatedTime": "2022-01-06T12:30:39.884Z" } .......... ] }

From this response, you can see the following information:

“Returns” APIs are fully operational, with no issues communicating with Walmart’s servers.
The “Authorization” and “Promos” APIs have issues communicating with Walmart’s servers.

Each group of APIs may have one of the following statuses:

OPERATIONAL: The API is performing as expected, and the Walmart Monitoring Systems are reporting no outages
SERVICE_DEGRADATION: The API is performing less optimally, and Sellers may face intermittent issues/comparatively high rate of failures when using the API
SERVICE_OUTAGE: The API is currently down and not serving any requests. Sellers may face complete failures when using the API

If you encounter issues when using APIs with “Service Degradation” and “Service Outage” statuses, the Walmart Support team is already working to resolve them. You do not need to create a support ticket for the same issue.

However, if you encounter issues with APIs with “Operational” statuses, please create a support ticket to inform our team.

**Please look out for the outage message posted and the current progress and ETA for the issue to be solved.**

The API statuses are updated every 30 minutes or less.

_Calls to API Platform Status API are throttled. Refer to our guide for specific throttling details.