🐛 getCatalog pagination limited to 50 products & getCollections capped at 20 items per collection

[kelvinzer0]

Problem

I am running a WhatsApp Business catalog with 63+ products across 6 collections. The current Evolution API implementation has critical pagination limitations that prevent fetching all products correctly.

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1. getCatalog — Auto-pagination limited to 50 products max

File: src/api/integrations/channel/whatsapp/whatsapp.baileys.service.ts

const limit = data.limit || 10;        // ← Default is only 10!
let countLoops = 0;
while (fetcherHasMore && countLoops < 4) {  // ← Max 4 loops only!
  catalog = await this.getCatalog({ jid, limit, cursor: nextPageCursor });
  // ...
  countLoops++;
}

• With default limit=10 and max 4 loops → 50 products max
• Even with limit=50 and 4 loops → 250 products max
• For catalogs with 250+ products, this is insufficient
• The WhatsApp binary protocol supports cursor-based pagination via the <after> tag, but the Evolution API does not expose the cursor parameter to users

2. cursor parameter stripped by validation schema

File: src/validate/business.schema.ts

export const catalogSchema = {
  type: "object",
  properties: {
    number: { type: "string" },
    limit: { type: "number" },
    // ⚠️ cursor is MISSING from validation schema!
  },
};

Even though getCatalogDto defines cursor?: string, the validation schema strips it out, so users cannot manually paginate beyond the auto-pagination limit.

3. getCollections — Hard cap at 20 items per collection

File: src/api/integrations/channel/whatsapp/whatsapp.baileys.service.ts

const limit = data.limit <= 20 ? data.limit : 20;  // "tem esse limite, não sei porque"

• Collections with more than 20 products get truncated
• In my case, both "Seblak" and "Cemilan" collections have exactly 20 products each — adding even 1 more product would cause data loss
• The comment "tem esse limite, não sei porque" ("it has this limit, I don't know why") suggests this cap is arbitrary
• Baileys defaults to limit = 51 for getCollections, but Evolution API overrides it to max 20

4. getCatalog frequently returns isBusiness: false (unreliable)

The fetchCatalog method catches errors and returns a fallback:

} catch (error) {
  console.log(error);
  return { wuid: jid, name: null, isBusiness: false };
}

This makes getCatalog unreliable — it frequently returns empty results even for valid business accounts, while getCollections works consistently.

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Proposed Solutions

1. Increase auto-pagination loops — Change countLoops < 4 to a higher value (e.g., countLoops < 20) or make it configurable

2. Expose cursor in validation schema — Add cursor: { type: "string" } to catalogSchema so users can manually paginate

3. Increase limit default — Change data.limit || 10 to data.limit || 50 for better out-of-the-box experience

4. Remove or increase getCollections item limit — Change data.limit <= 20 ? data.limit : 20 to allow higher values (e.g., data.limit || 100)

5. Add nextPageCursor to getCatalog API response — Currently the internal auto-pagination consumes the cursor, but exposing it would allow external pagination

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Environment

• Evolution API version: latest (self-hosted)
• WhatsApp integration: Baileys
• Catalog size: 63+ products across 6 collections
• Business account: Verified and active

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Workaround (for anyone facing the same issue)

Currently using getCollections as the primary data source (it returns all products with collection/category info) and skipping getCatalog entirely. However, this still has the 20-item-per-collection limit.

cc: @n8n users who sync WA catalogs — this affects any catalog with 50+ products