title: Magento Dropshipping - How to automate catalog updates?
body: <p>I am new to Magento and impressed by the MVC framework that powers it, making module development a well thought out solution. I am strong CakePHP developer.</p>
  
  <p>I am working on a project that uses a dropshipper for the physical products. As a result, every day at 4am a feed needs to be parsed and the products / categories modified, plus stock information. A CRON will be setup to do this.</p>
  
  <p>Additional requirements are:
  Upon a sucessful order, the system must upload a CSV feed to the Dropshipper via FTP with the order details for distribution.
  Realtime stock checks, either every hour by CRON or a lookup on the product page</p>
  
  <p>I can think of 2 approaches:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Write everything natively into Magento. As a newbie, this is going to be a big learning curve, but it is the right solution?</p></li>
  <li><p>Write a simple CakePHP app that runs as a shell. This will use the Magento API to manage all dropshipper processes. This solution will be easier to rollout but introduces an additional system to support.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Does anyone have an advice relating to dropshipping in Magento?</p>