Shopify Application Rails engine and generator
NOTE: Versions 8.0.0 through 8.2.3 contained a CSRF vulnerability that was addressed in version 8.2.4. Please update to version 8.2.4 if you're using an old version.
- Introduction
- Become a Shopify App Developer
- Installation
- Generators
- Mounting the Engine
- Authentication
- WebhooksManager
- ScripttagsManager
- RotateShopifyTokenJob
- App Tunneling
- AppProxyVerification
- Troubleshooting
- Testing an embedded app outside the Shopify admin
- Migration to 13.0.0
- Questions or problems?
- Rails 6 Compatibility
- Upgrading from 8.6 to 9.0.0
Get started with the Shopify Admin API faster; This gem includes a Rails Engine and generators for writing Rails applications using the Shopify API. The Engine provides a SessionsController and all the required code for authenticating with a shop via OAuth (other authentication methods are not supported).
Note: It's recommended to use this on a new Rails project so that the generator won't overwrite/delete your files.
Learn how to create and deploy a new Shopify App to Heroku with our quickstart guide, or dive in in less than 5 minutes with this quickstart video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGxeoAHlQOg
To become a Shopify App Developer, you'll need a Shopify Partner account. If you don't have a Shopify Partner account, head to http://shopify.com/partners to create one before you start.
Once you have a Partner account, create a new application in the Partner Dashboard to get an API key and other API credentials.
To create an application for development set your new app's App URL
to the URL provided by your tunnel, ensuring that you use https://
. If you are not planning to embed your app inside the Shopify admin or receive webhooks, set your redirect URL to http://localhost:3000/
and the Whitelisted redirection URL(s)
to contain <App URL>/auth/shopify/callback
.
To get started, add shopify_app
to your Gemfile and run bundle install
:
# Create a new rails app
$ rails new my_shopify_app
$ cd my_shopify_app
# Add the gem shopify_app to your Gemfile
$ bundle add shopify_app
Now we are ready to run any of the generators included with shopify_app
. The following section explains the generators and what you can do with them.
The latest version of shopify_app is compatible with Rails >= 5
. Use version <= v7.2.8
if you need to work with Rails 4.
The default generator will run the install
, shop
, authenticated_controller
, and home_controller
generators. This is the recommended way to start a new app from scratch:
$ rails generate shopify_app
After running the generator, you will need to run rails db:migrate
to add new tables to your database. You can start your app with bundle exec rails server
and install your app by visiting http://localhost
in your web browser.
The default and install generators have been updated to source Shopify API key and secret from an Environment (.env
) variables file, which you will need to create with the following format:
SHOPIFY_API_KEY=your api key
SHOPIFY_API_SECRET=your api secret
These values can be found on the "App Setup" page in the Shopify Partners Dashboard. If you are checking your code into a code repository, ensure your .gitignore
prevents your .env
file from being checked into any publicly accessible code.
You will need to load the ENV variables into your environment, you can do this with the dot-env gem or any other method you wish to.
$ rails generate shopify_app:install
Options include:
application_name
- the name of your app, it can be supplied with or without double-quotes if a whitespace is present. (e.g.--application_name Example App
or--application_name "Example App"
)scope
- the OAuth access scope required for your app, e.g. read_products, write_orders. Multiple options need to be delimited by a comma-space and can be supplied with or without double-quotes (e.g.--scope read_products, write_orders, write_products
or--scope "read_products, write_orders, write_products"
) For more information, refer to the docs.embedded
- the default is to generate an embedded app, if you want a legacy non-embedded app then set this to false,--embedded false
You can update any of these settings later on easily; the arguments are simply for convenience.
The generator adds ShopifyApp and the required initializers to the host Rails application.
After running the install
generator, you can start your app with bundle exec rails server
and install your app by visiting localhost.
$ rails generate shopify_app:home_controller
This generator creates an example home controller and view which fetches and displays products using the Shopify API.
Options include:
- [beta]
with-session-token
: This flag generates an unauthenticated home_controller and a protected sample products_controller. It also creates a home view that leverages a session token to fetch products from your products_controller. Use this flag if you plan to build a single-page application or to secure your app using JWT session tokens (e.g.--with-session-token
or--with-session-token true
).
$ rails generate shopify_app:products_controller
This generator creates an example products API controller to fetch products using the Shopify API.
$ rails generate shopify_app:app_proxy_controller
This optional generator, not included with the default generator, creates the app proxy controller to handle proxy requests to the app from your shop storefront, modifies 'config/routes.rb' with a namespace route, and an example view which displays current shop information using the LiquidAPI.
$ rails generate shopify_app:add_marketing_activity_extension
This will create a controller with the endpoints required to build a marketing activities extension. The extension will be generated with a base URL at /marketing_activities
, which should also be configured in partners.
The last group of generators are for your convenience if you want to start overriding code included as part of the Rails engine. For example, by default the engine provides a simple SessionController, if you run the rails generate shopify_app:controllers
generator then this code gets copied out into your app so you can start adding to it. Routes and views follow the exact same pattern.
Mounting the Engine will provide the basic routes to authenticating a shop with your application. By default it will provide:
Verb | Route | Action |
---|---|---|
GET | '/login' | Login |
POST | '/login' | Login |
GET | '/auth/shopify/callback' | Authenticate Callback |
GET | '/logout' | Logout |
POST | '/webhooks/:type' | Webhook Callback |
The engine may also be mounted at a nested route, for example:
mount ShopifyApp::Engine, at: '/nested'
This will create the Shopify engine routes under the specified subpath. You'll also need to make some updates to your shopify_app.rb
and omniauth.rb
initializers. First, update the shopify_app initializer to include a custom root_url
e.g.:
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.root_url = '/nested'
end
then update the omniauth initializer to include a custom callback_path
e.g.:
provider :shopify,
ShopifyApp.configuration.api_key,
ShopifyApp.configuration.secret,
scope: ShopifyApp.configuration.scope,
callback_path: '/nested/auth/shopify/callback'
You may also need to change your config/routes.rb
to render a view for /nested
, since this is what will be rendered in the Shopify Admin of any shops that have installed your app. The engine itself doesn't have a view for this, so you'll need something like this:
# config/routes.rb
Rails.application.routes.draw do
root :to => 'something_else#index'
get "/nested", to: "home#index"
mount ShopifyApp::Engine, at: '/nested'
end
Finally, note that if you do this, to add your app to a store, you must navigate to /nested
in order to render the Enter your shop domain to log in or install this app.
UI.
While you can customize the login view by creating a /app/views/shopify_app/sessions/new.html.erb
file, you may also want to customize the URL entirely. You can modify your shopify_app.rb
initializer to provide a custom login_url
e.g.:
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.login_url = 'https://my.domain.com/nested/login'
end
Upon completing the authentication flow, Shopify calls the app at the callback_path
mentioned before. If the app needs to do some extra work, it can define and configure the route to a custom callback controller, inheriting from ShopifyApp::CallbackController
and hook into or override any of the defined helper methods. The default callback controller already provides the following behaviour:
- Logging into the shop and resetting the session
- Installing Webhooks
- Setting Scripttags
- Performing the AfterAuthenticate Job
- Redirecting to the return address
Note that starting with version 8.4.0, we have extracted the callback logic in its own controller. If you are upgrading from a version older than 8.4.0 the callback action and related helper methods were defined in ShopifyApp::SessionsController
==> you will have to extend ShopifyApp::CallbackController
instead and port your logic to the new controller.
ShopifyApp::SessionRepository
allows you as a developer to define how your sessions are stored and retrieved for shops. The SessionRepository
is configured in the config/initializers/shopify_app.rb
file and can be set to any object that implements self.store(auth_session, *args)
which stores the session and returns a unique identifier and self.retrieve(id)
which returns a ShopifyAPI::Session
for the passed id. These methods are already implemented as part of the ShopifyApp::SessionStorage
concern but can be overridden for custom implementation.
Storing tokens on the store model means that any user login associated with the store will have equal access levels to whatever the original user granted the app.
$ rails generate shopify_app:shop_model
This will generate a shop model which will be the storage for the tokens necessary for authentication.
A more granular control over the level of access per user on an app might be necessary, to which the shop-based token strategy is not sufficient. Shopify supports a user-based token storage strategy where a unique token to each user can be managed. Shop tokens must still be maintained if you are running background jobs so that you can make use of them when necessary.
$ rails generate shopify_app:shop_model
$ rails generate shopify_app:user_model
This will generate a shop model and user model, which will be the storage for the tokens necessary for authentication.
The current Shopify user will be stored in the rails session at session[:shopify_user]
Read more about Online vs. Offline access here.
- Run the
user_model
generator as mentioned above. - Ensure that both your
Shop
model andUser
model includes the necessary concernsShopifyApp::ShopSessionStorage
andShopifyApp::UserSessionStorage
. - Make changes to 2 initializer files as shown below:
# In the `omniauth.rb` initializer:
provider :shopify,
...
setup: lambda { |env|
...
# Add this line
strategy.options[:per_user_permissions] = strategy.session[:user_tokens]
...
}
# In the `shopify_app.rb` initializer:
config.shop_session_repository = {YOUR_SHOP_MODEL_CLASS}
config.user_session_repository = {YOUR_USER_MODEL_CLASS}
The engine provides a ShopifyApp::Authenticated
concern which should be included in any controller that is intended to be behind Shopify OAuth. It adds before_action
s to ensure that the user is authenticated and will redirect to the Shopify login page if not. It is best practice to include this concern in a base controller inheriting from your ApplicationController
, from which all controllers that require Shopify authentication inherit.
For backwards compatibility, the engine still provides a controller called ShopifyApp::AuthenticatedController
which includes the ShopifyApp::Authenticated
concern. Note that it inherits directly from ActionController::Base
, so you will not be able to share functionality between it and your application's ApplicationController
.
If your app needs to perform specific actions after the user is authenticated successfully (i.e. every time a new session is created), ShopifyApp can queue or run a job of your choosing (note that we already provide support for automatically creating Webhooks and Scripttags). To configure the after authenticate job, update your initializer as follows:
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.after_authenticate_job = { job: "Shopify::AfterAuthenticateJob" }
end
The job can be configured as either a class or a class name string.
If you need the job to run synchronously add the inline
flag:
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.after_authenticate_job = { job: Shopify::AfterAuthenticateJob, inline: true }
end
We've also provided a generator which creates a skeleton job and updates the initializer for you:
bin/rails g shopify_app:add_after_authenticate_job
If you want to perform that action only once, e.g. send a welcome email to the user when they install the app, you should make sure that this action is idempotent, meaning that it won't have an impact if run multiple times.
Shopify's API is versioned, and you can read about that process in the Shopify Developers documentation page.
Since shopify_app gem version 1.11.0, the included shopify_api gem has also been updated to allow you to easily set and switch what version of the Shopify API you want your app or service to use, as well as surface warnings to Rails apps about deprecated endpoints, GraphQL fields and more.
See the shopify_api gem README for more details.
ShopifyApp can manage your app's webhooks for you if you set which webhooks you require in the initializer:
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.webhooks = [
{topic: 'carts/update', address: 'https://example-app.com/webhooks/carts_update'}
]
end
When the OAuth callback is completed successfully, ShopifyApp will queue a background job which will ensure all the specified webhooks exist for that shop. Because this runs on every OAuth callback, it means your app will always have the webhooks it needs even if the user uninstalls and re-installs the app.
ShopifyApp also provides a WebhooksController that receives webhooks and queues a job based on the received topic. For example, if you register the webhook from above, then all you need to do is create a job called CartsUpdateJob
. The job will be queued with 2 params: shop_domain
and webhook
(which is the webhook body).
If you would like to namespace your jobs, you may set webhook_jobs_namespace
in the config. For example, if your app handles webhooks from other ecommerce applications as well, and you want Shopify cart update webhooks to be processed by a job living in jobs/shopify/webhooks/carts_update_job.rb
rather than jobs/carts_update_job.rb
):
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.webhook_jobs_namespace = 'shopify/webhooks'
end
If you are only interested in particular fields, you can optionally filter the data sent by Shopify by specifying the fields
parameter in config/webhooks
. Note that you will still receive a webhook request from Shopify every time the resource is updated, but only the specified fields will be sent.
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.webhooks = [
{topic: 'products/update', address: 'https://example-app.com/webhooks/products_update', fields: ['title', 'vendor']}
]
end
If you'd rather implement your own controller then you'll want to use the WebhookVerification module to verify your webhooks, example:
class CustomWebhooksController < ApplicationController
include ShopifyApp::WebhookVerification
def carts_update
params.permit!
SomeJob.perform_later(shop_domain: shop_domain, webhook: webhook_params.to_h)
head :no_content
end
private
def webhook_params
params.except(:controller, :action, :type)
end
end
The module skips the verify_authenticity_token
before_action and adds an action to verify that the webhook came from Shopify. You can now add a post route to your application, pointing to the controller and action to accept the webhook data from Shopify.
The WebhooksManager uses ActiveJob. If ActiveJob is not configured then by default Rails will run the jobs inline. However, it is highly recommended to configure a proper background processing queue like Sidekiq or Resque in production.
ShopifyApp can create webhooks for you using the add_webhook
generator. This will add the new webhook to your config and create the required job class for you.
rails g shopify_app:add_webhook -t carts/update -a https://example.com/webhooks/carts_update
Where -t
is the topic and -a
is the address the webhook should be sent to.
As with webhooks, ShopifyApp can manage your app's scripttags for you by setting which scripttags you require in the initializer:
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.scripttags = [
{event:'onload', src: 'https://my-shopifyapp.herokuapp.com/fancy.js'},
{event:'onload', src: ->(domain) { dynamic_tag_url(domain) } }
]
end
You also need to have write_script_tags permission in the config scope in order to add script tags automatically:
config.scope = '... , write_script_tags'
Scripttags are created in the same way as the Webhooks, with a background job which will create the required scripttags.
If src
responds to call
its return value will be used as the scripttag's source. It will be called on scripttag creation and deletion.
If your Shopify secret key is leaked, you can use the RotateShopifyTokenJob to perform API Credential Rotation.
Before running the job, you'll need to generate a new secret key from your Shopify Partner dashboard, and update the /config/initializers/shopify_app.rb
to hold your new and old secret keys:
config.secret = Rails.application.secrets.shopify_secret
config.old_secret = Rails.application.secrets.old_shopify_secret
We've provided a generator which creates the job and an example rake task:
bin/rails g shopify_app:rotate_shopify_token_job
The generated rake task will be found at lib/tasks/shopify/rotate_shopify_token.rake
and is provided strictly for example purposes. It might not work with your application out of the box without some configuration.
shopify_app
from a version prior to 8.4.2 (and do not wish to run the default/install generator again), you will need to add the following line to config/initializers/omniauth.rb
:
strategy.options[:old_client_secret] = ShopifyApp.configuration.old_secret
Your local app needs to be accessible from the public Internet in order to install it on a Shopify store, to use the App Proxy Controller or receive Webhooks.
Use a tunneling service like ngrok, Forward, Beeceptor, Mockbin, or Hookbin to make your development environment accessible to the internet.
For example with ngrok, run this command to set up a tunnel proxy to Rails' default port:
ngrok http 3000
The engine provides a mixin for verifying incoming HTTP requests sent via an App Proxy. Any controller that include
s ShopifyApp::AppProxyVerification
will verify that each request has a valid signature
query parameter that is calculated using the other query parameters and the app's shared secret.
The App Proxy Controller Generator automatically adds the mixin to the generated app_proxy_controller.rb Additional controllers for resources within the App_Proxy namespace, will need to include the mixin like so:
# app/controllers/app_proxy/reviews_controller.rb
class ReviewsController < ApplicationController
include ShopifyApp::AppProxyVerification
# ...
end
Create your app proxy URL in the Shopify Partners' Dashboard, making sure to point it to https://your_app_website.com/app_proxy
.
A basic example of using App Bridge is included in the install generator. An app instance is automatically initialized in shopify_app.js and flash_messages.js converts Rails flash messages to App Bridge Toast actions automatically. By default, this library is included via unpkg in the embedded_app layout. For more advanced uses it is recommended to install App Bridge via npm or yarn.
A test helper that will allow you to test ShopifyApp::WebhookVerification
in the controller from your app, to use this test, you need to require
it directly inside your app test/controllers/webhook_verification_test.rb
.
require 'test_helper'
require 'action_controller'
require 'action_controller/base'
require 'shopify_app/test_helpers/webhook_verification_helper'
Or you can require in your test/test_helper.rb
.
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'test'
require_relative '../config/environment'
require 'rails/test_help'
require 'byebug'
require 'shopify_app/test_helpers/all'
With lib/shopify_app/test_helpers/all'
more tests can be added and will only need to be required in once in your library.
By default, loading your embedded app will redirect to the Shopify admin, with the app view loaded in an iframe
. If you need to load your app outside of the Shopify admin (e.g., for performance testing), you can change forceRedirect: true
to false
in ShopifyApp.init
block in the embedded_app
view. To keep the redirect on in production but off in your development
and test
environments, you can use:
forceRedirect: <%= Rails.env.development? || Rails.env.test? ? 'false' : 'true' %>
Version 13.0.0 adds the ability to use both user and shop sessions, concurrently. This however involved a large change to how session stores work. Here are the steps to migrate to 13.x
- REMOVE
config.per_user_tokens = [true|false]
this is no longer needed - CHANGE
config.session_repository = 'Shop'
Toconfig.shop_session_repository = 'Shop'
- ADD (optional) User Session Storage
config.user_session_repository = 'User'
- CHANGE
include ShopifyApp::SessionStorage
toinclude ShopifyApp::ShopSessionStorage
- CHANGE if you are using shop sessions,
@shop_session
will need to be changed to@current_shopify_session
.
- CHANGE
session[:shopify]
is no longer set. Usesession[:user_id]
if your app uses user based tokens, orsession[:shop_id]
if your app uses shop based tokens.
ShopifyApp::LoginProtection
- CHANGE if you are using
ShopifyApp::LoginProtection#shopify_session
in your code, it will need to be changed toShopifyApp::LoginProtection#activate_shopify_session
- CHANGE if you are using
ShopifyApp::LoginProtection#clear_shop_session
in your code, it will need to be changed toShopifyApp::LoginProtection#clear_shopify_session
You do not need a user model; a shop session is fine for most applications.
- Ask questions!
- Read the docs!
- And don't forget to check the Changelog too!
If you override def self.store(auth_session)
method in your session storage model (e.g. Shop), the method signature has changed to def self.store(auth_session, *args)
in order to support user-based token storage. Please update your method signature to include the second argument.
If you are using sprockets in rails 6 or want to generate a shopify_app without webpacker run the install task by running
SHOPIFY_APP_DISABLE_WEBPACKER=1 rails generate shopify_app
and then in your ShopifyApp configuration block, add
ShopifyApp.configure do |config|
config.disable_webpacker = true
end
Add an API version configuration in config/initializers/shopify_app.rb
Set this to the version you want to run against by default. See Shopify API docs for versions available.
config.api_version = '2019-04'
You will need to add an api_version
method to your session storage object. The default implementation for this is.
def api_version
ShopifyApp.configuration.api_version
end
embedded_app.html.erb
the usage of shop_session.url
needs to be changed to shop_session.domain
<script type="text/javascript">
ShopifyApp.init({
apiKey: "<%= ShopifyApp.configuration.api_key %>",
shopOrigin: "<%= "https://#{ @shop_session.url }" if @shop_session %>",
debug: false,
forceRedirect: true
});
</script>
is changed to
<script type="text/javascript">
ShopifyApp.init({
apiKey: "<%= ShopifyApp.configuration.api_key %>",
shopOrigin: "<%= "https://#{ @shop_session.domain }" if @shop_session %>",
debug: false,
forceRedirect: true
});
</script>
You will need to also follow the ShopifyAPI upgrade guide to ensure your app is ready to work with API versioning.