Quick Start

Connect a product data source and get your first delta event in under 5 minutes. This guide uses curl against the live API — no SDK needed.

Step 1 — Sign up and get an API key

Create a free account at catalogian.com. Then go to Settings → API Keys and create a key with full scope. Copy the key — it starts with cat_live_.

export CATALOGIAN_KEY="cat_live_your_key_here"

Step 2 — Create an HTTP source

Point Catalogian at a public CSV. This example uses a sample product feed:

curl -X POST https://api.catalogian.com/v1/sources \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CATALOGIAN_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Sample Products",
    "type": "http",
    "url": "https://example.com/products.csv",
    "format": "csv",
    "keyField": "sku",
    "checkIntervalMinutes": 240
  }'

The response includes the source id — save it for the next step.

Tip: The keyField must be a column that uniquely identifies each row. Common choices: sku, id, product_id.

Step 3 — Trigger the first check

Catalogian will check automatically on your interval, but you can trigger the first check immediately:

curl -X POST https://api.catalogian.com/v1/sources/:id/check \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CATALOGIAN_KEY"

Replace :id with your source ID. The first check establishes the baseline snapshot — every row shows as new.

Step 4 — Query the latest delta

After the check completes (usually a few seconds for small feeds), fetch the delta:

curl https://api.catalogian.com/v1/sources/:id/delta/latest \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CATALOGIAN_KEY"

Response:

{
  "event": {
    "id": "evt_01j...",
    "detectedAt": "2026-03-19T12:00:00.000Z",
    "newCount": 1250,
    "changedCount": 0,
    "deletedCount": 0,
    "unchangedCount": 0,
    "totalCount": 1250,
    "isNoChange": false,
    "newKeys": ["sku-001", "sku-002", "sku-003"]
  }
}

Step 5 — Get row-level details

To see the full data for changed rows, hit the delta rows endpoint:

curl "https://api.catalogian.com/v1/sources/:id/delta/:deltaEventId/rows?changeType=new&limit=5" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CATALOGIAN_KEY"

This returns the actual row data — field names, values, and for changed rows, the before/after diff.

Next steps