AddItem as a Draft?

[four_rips]

Using the AddItem endpoint can you create a listing as a draft?

[shipscript]

The AddItem call within the Trading API creates a real listing with an ItemID. There is no way to create a draft with that call. However, if you are just trying to set up listings for further manipulation prior to launching, you could fill in placeholder values and schedule the listing using ScheduleTime.  A listing can be scheduled up to three weeks into the future and does not count against your listing total or incur any fees until it goes live. Additionally, the listing can be rescheduled many times over, prior to its scheduled start date.

The Inventory API can create something like a draft using the createOffer call. It must then go through the publishOffer call to become a listing.

https://developer.ebay.com/api-docs/sell/inventory/resources/offer/methods/createOffer

"This call creates an offer for a specific inventory item on a specific eBay marketplace. It is up to the sellers whether they want to create a complete offer (with all necessary details) right from the start, or sellers can provide only some information with the initial createOffer call, and then make one or more subsequent updateOffer calls to complete the offer and prepare to publish the offer....The seller must run the publishOffer call to convert the offer to an active eBay listing."

[four_rips]

Thank you for your response. For using the offer flow, if I use the API to create an offer, does the offer show up anywhere in the Sell console on the website itself? The reason I ask is I'm trying to create the listing with everything besides the photos, then use the ebay app to upload the photos to the listing.

[shipscript]

The createOffer will not generate anything that can be manipulated with eBay's online listing management tools.  If you only need to add photos in the end, then I would recommend creating a listing with a scheduled start date, as that will appear on eBay, where you can add desktop/phone photos at your leisure. Then the scheduling can be removed and the listing will post.

eBay's Seller Hub (File Exchange) has the ability to upload a "draft" listing, but sellers agree that too much info is missing in that draft. So the Seller Hub solution is similar to the above, where a spreadsheet can be used to upload nearly complete listings with a scheduled start date.

In either case, creating an API listing or a Spreadsheet listing, a photo URL will be required. When editing on eBay's app, the  placeholder URL will need to be replaced with the local photos because there can not be a mix of manually uploaded photos and prehosted photo URLs.