How I used inventory Endpoint to sell items

Motivation

As a side project, I manage multiple Steam accounts for trading. Many of these accounts have items lying around that I needed to sell efficiently.

The usual process

Without using the inventory endpoint, the typical process involves:

For each item in the inventory: Determining the itemNameId Fetching the histogram Using the histogram to determine the price for the item Selling the item

1. Fetching the inventory directly from Steam
2. Parsing the inventory data
3. For each item in the inventory
   • Determining the itemNameId
   • Fetching the histogram
   • Using the histogram to determine the price for the item
4. Selling the item

Process with the inventory endpoint

By using the inventory endpoint, steps 2 and 3 can be omitted:

1. Fetch the inventory from the SteamAPIHub endpoint
2. For each item in the inventory:
   • Sell the item using the price already present in the response

Additionally, there is no need to worry about rate limits from Steam.

Conclusion

While this task may not seem like a big deal, it is time-consuming due to Steam's rate limits, inventory parsing, identifying itemNameIds, and fetching histograms.

A common mistake is underestimating the time required, thinking it should take no more than 15 minutes. In reality, it often turns into a 2-3 hour task.

Some may ask, "Why use your endpoint when I can implement it myself?" While it is possible to implement it yourself, consider comparing your usual hourly rate with the cost of using the endpoint. The endpoint can be turned off at any time, resulting in a cost of only a few cents.