A few Gotchas with Shopify API Development

I had a fun weekend with my roommate hacking on the Shopify API and learning the Ruby on Rails framework. Shopify makes it super easy to begin building Shopify Apps for the Shopify App Store – essentially the Apple App Store equivalent for Shopify store owners to add features to their customer facing and backend admin interfaces. Shopify provides two handy Ruby gems to speed up development: shopify_app and shopify_api. An overview of the two gems are given and then their weaknesses are explained.

Shopify provides a handy gem called shopify_app which makes it simple to start developing an app for the Shopify App Store. The gem provides Rails generators to create controllers, add webhooks, configure the basic models and add the required OAuth authentication – just enough to get started.

The shopify_api gem is a thin wrapper of the Shopify API. shopify_app integrates it into the controllers automatically, making requests for a store’s data very simple.

Frustrations With the API

The process of getting a developer account and developer store created takes no time at all. The API documentation is clear for the most part. Though attempting to develop using the Plus APIs can be frustrating when using the APIs for the first time. For example, querying the Discount API, Gift Card API, Multipass API, or User API results in unhelpful 404 errors. The development store’s admin interface is misleading as a discounts section can be accessed where discounts may be added and removed.

By default, anyone who signs up to become a developer only has access to the standard API endpoints, leaving no access to the Plus endpoints. These Plus endpoints are only available to stores which pay for Shopify Plus, and after digging into many Shopify discussion boards it was explained by a Shopify employee that developers need to work with a store who pays for Shopify Plus to get access to those Plus endpoints. The 404 error when accessing the API didn’t explain this and only added confusion to the situation.

One area that could be improved is that there is little mention of tiered developer accounts. The API should at least give a useful error message in the response’s body explaining what is needed to gain access to it.

Webhooks Could be Easier to Work With

The shopify_app gem provides a simple way to define any webhooks that should be registered with the Shopify API for the app to function. The defined webhooks are registered only once after the app is added to a store. During development you may add and remove many webhooks for your app. Since defined webhooks are only registered when the app is added to a store the most straightforward way to refresh the webhooks is to remove the app from the store and then add it again.

This can become pretty tedious which is why I did some digging around in the shopify_app code and created the following code sample to synchronize the required webhooks with the Shopify API. Simply hit this controller or call the containing code somewhere in the codebase.

If there’s a better solution to this problem please let me know.

Lastly, to keep track of your sanity the httplog gem is useful to track the http calls that shopify_app, shopify_api and any other gem makes.

Wrapping Up

The developer experience on the Shopify API and app store is quite pleasing. It has been around long enough to build up a flourishing community of people asking questions and sharing code. I believe the issues outlined above can be easily solved and will make Shopify a more pleasing platform.