Sanmar

MCP Tools

Deterministic SanMar API toolkit — wraps SanMar's SOAP web services and PromoStandards order-shipment service behind typed CLI tools. Search products, check real-time warehouse inventory, pull customer-specific (myPrice) pricing, validate carts, submit and track purchase orders, parse PO PDFs, and resolve marketing color names to SanMar mainframe color codes. Use whenever the user needs to read from or write to SanMar for apparel sourcing, pricing, ordering, or order tracking.

Install

openclaw skills install sanmar

SanMar API toolkit

This skill is a deterministic, JSON-in / JSON-out wrapper over SanMar's SOAP web services and the PromoStandards order-shipment-notification service. Every tool is reached through one CLI entrypoint:

echo '<json-args>' | python3 scripts/sanmar.py <action>

The action is the first CLI argument; arguments are a JSON object on stdin. Each call prints a single JSON object on stdout, or {"error": {"type": ..., "message": ...}} with a non-zero exit code on failure.

The skill is self-contained: no Odoo, no ORM, no lxml. It needs Python 3.11+ and requests; all XML/SOAP work uses the stdlib xml.etree.ElementTree. Two optional installs unlock two tools:

  • pypdf>=4.0 — required for parse-po-pdf (PDF text extraction).
  • paramiko>=3.0 — required for lookup-mainframe-color and the marketing-color auto-resolve fallback in check-inventory / get-pricing.

Both are imported lazily, so the skill still loads without them; the affected tools raise a clear error pointing at the missing pip install.

When to use this skill

Reach for a scripts/sanmar.py action when the request involves any of:

  • Looking up SanMar product styles, colors, sizes, or images.
  • Checking real-time inventory at SanMar warehouses for a style/color/size.
  • Pulling customer-specific (myPrice) pricing for a SKU.
  • Validating a draft cart of style/color/size lines before ordering.
  • Submitting a SanMar purchase order, or polling its status / tracking.
  • Parsing an uploaded PDF purchase order into a structured draft for review.
  • Translating a marketing color name (e.g. "Athletic Heather") into SanMar's mainframe color code (e.g. "ATHHTHR") when inventory/pricing rejects the consumer-facing color.

Do not use it for other apparel vendors (S&S, Alpha, etc.), and never invent SanMar request shapes from prose — call the deterministic actions.

Actions

ActionRiskstdin JSON (key fields)
search-productsread-only{style, color?, size?}
check-inventoryread-only{style, color, size, auto_resolve_color?}
get-pricingread-only{lines: [{style, color, size}, ...], auto_resolve_color?}
validate-cartread-only{purchase_order: {...}} (pre-submit, no commit)
create-purchase-orderhigh — external write{purchase_order: {...}, confirm}
check-order-statusread-only{po_number}
get-trackingread-only{po_number}
cancel-orderstub{po_number, reason?, confirm?} — SanMar exposes no public cancel endpoint
parse-po-pdfread-only (local file){pdf_path}
lookup-mainframe-colorread-only (SFTP){style, color, size?, force_refresh?}

Run python3 scripts/sanmar.py with no action to print the full action list. See references/examples.md for realistic prompts and end-to-end flows.

Credentials

SanMar SOAP requests carry three fields: sanMarCustomerNumber, sanMarUserName, sanMarUserPassword. PromoStandards (order shipment) reuses the same username/password in its SOAP header.

The skill never hardcodes credentials. Supply them in either of two ways:

  1. Environment variables (preferred for a deployed agent):

    SANMAR_CUSTOMER_NUMBER=...
    SANMAR_USERNAME=...
    SANMAR_PASSWORD=...
    SANMAR_ENV=production        # or "development" — flips PO submit to test-ws
    # SFTP (only for mainframe-color resolution; separate password):
    SANMAR_FTP_USERNAME=<customer_number>   # defaults to SANMAR_CUSTOMER_NUMBER
    SANMAR_FTP_PASSWORD=...
    
  2. Inline in the stdin JSON — pass customer_number, username, password, environment, and (for SFTP tools) ftp_password alongside the tool's own arguments. Inline values take precedence over the environment.

If neither is present, the tool exits with {"error": {"type": "config_error", ...}} (exit code 2) — treat that as a signal to ask the user for the missing fields. Do not guess defaults, reuse credentials across tenants, or paste secrets the user did not provide.

FTP credentials are separate. Per SanMar's FTP Integration Guide v23.1, the SDL feed lives on ftp.sanmar.com:2200 over SFTP (SSH), and the FTP password is issued separately from the web-services password — your sanmar.com web username will not work on the FTP server.

Write safety

create-purchase-order and cancel-order are the only side-effecting actions.

  • create-purchase-order requires "confirm": true to transmit. Without it, it returns a dry-run preview of the SOAP envelope and makes no submit call. Normal flow: get-pricing (to enrich each line with inventory_key and size_index) → validate-cart (proceed only if ok) → create-purchase-order with confirm: true. Confirm with the user first.
  • cancel-order is a reserved stub: SanMar's published SOAP and PromoStandards bindings expose no cancel operation, so it always returns a structured not_implemented response. Cancellations go through SanMar customer service.

All other actions are pure reads.

PDF purchase-order intake

parse-po-pdf takes {"pdf_path": "..."} and returns a best-effort ParsedPurchaseOrder: po_number, order_date, ship_method, ship_to, lines[] (style, color, size, quantity, unit_price), warnings[] for low-confidence fields, and draft_for_submit — a ready-to-pass purchase_order object for create-purchase-order, populated only when the parse is complete enough. Always show the parsed PO back to the user for approval before submitting. Heuristic parsing cannot guarantee correctness across every PO layout — treat the output as a draft.

Mainframe color resolution

SanMar's inventory/pricing/PO endpoints query against the mainframe color code (e.g. ATHHTHR), not the marketing COLOR_NAME (Athletic Heather). When a marketing name is used, SanMar typically errors or returns nothing.

check-inventory and get-pricing auto-handle this: on error or an empty response (and with auto_resolve_color defaulting to true) they download SanMarPDD/SanMar_SDL_N.csv over SFTP, look up the matching SANMAR_MAINFRAME_COLOR, and retry once. Pass auto_resolve_color: false when you already have a known mainframe code. For explicit control, call lookup-mainframe-color directly — its status is matched, ambiguous, or not_found. The SDL CSV is cached locally for 24h (SanMar refreshes nightly); pass force_refresh: true to bypass the cache.

Endpoints

Production (default):

  • Pricing — SanMarWebService/SanMarPricingServicePort
  • Product info — SanMarWebService/SanMarProductInfoServicePort
  • Inventory — SanMarWebService/SanMarWebServicePort
  • PO submit — SanMarWebService/SanMarPOServicePort
  • Order shipment — promostandards/OrderShipmentNotificationServiceBinding

With SANMAR_ENV=development, the PO submit endpoint switches to https://test-ws.sanmar.com:8080/SanMarWebService/SanMarPOServicePort.

SanMar must allowlist the calling IP. A connection timeout is most often a missing IP allowlist entry, not an auth problem.

Error model

Failures print {"error": {...}} and exit non-zero:

  • config_error (exit 2) — missing/invalid credentials.
  • api_error — SanMar returned a SOAP fault or errorOccurred=true. Includes surface, operation, and retryable. retryable is false for auth, schema, and invalid-style errors.
  • connection_error — network/timeout talking to SanMar or its SFTP server (retryable: true for web-service transport failures).
  • validation_error — bad input JSON, a missing required field, or an unparseable PDF.
  • usage / unknown_action (exit 2) — bad CLI invocation; the message lists the valid actions.

Surface the human-readable message to the user. Do not retry on config_error, validation_error, or a non-retryable api_error.

References