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.
- Description
- Quickstart
- Becoming a Shopify App Developer
- App Tunneling
- Installation
- Generators
- Default Generator
- Install Generator
- Shop Model Generator
- Home Controller Generator
- App Proxy Controller Generator
- Controllers, Routes and Views
- Mounting the Engine
- WebhooksManager
- ScripttagsManager
- AfterAuthenticate Job
- ShopifyApp::SessionRepository
- Authenticated
- AppProxyVerification
- Recommended Usage
- Upgrading from 8.6 to 9.0.0
- Troubleshooting
- Generator shopify_app:install hangs
- Testing an embedded app outside the Shopify admin
- Questions or problems?
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 some of your files.
Check out this screencast on how to create and deploy a new Shopify App to Heroku in 5 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGxeoAHlQOg
Or if you prefer text instructions the steps in the video are written out here
Your local app needs to be accessible from the public Internet in order to install it on a shop, use the App Proxy Controller or receive Webhooks. Use a tunneling service like ngrok, Forward, Beeceptor, Mockbin, Hookbin, etc.
For example with ngrok, run this command to set up proxying to Rails' default port:
ngrok http 3000
If you don't have a Shopify Partner account yet head over to http://shopify.com/partners to create one, you'll need it before you can start developing apps.
Once you have a Partner account create a new application to get an API key and other API credentials. To create a development application set the App URL
to the URL provided by your tunnel or http://localhost:3000/
if you are not embeddeding your app inside the admin or receiving webhooks and the Whitelisted redirection URL(s)
to contain <App URL>/auth/shopify/callback
. Ensure you are using https://
URLs if you are using tunneling.
To get started add shopify_app to your Gemfile and bundle install
# Create a new rails app
$ rails new my_shopify_app
$ cd my_shopify_app
# Add the gem shopify_app to your Gemfile
$ echo "gem 'shopify_app'" >> Gemfile
$ bundle install
Now we are ready to run any of the shopify_app generators. The following section explains the generators and what they can do.
The lastest 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
, and home_controller
generators. This is the recommended way to start your app.
$ rails generate shopify_app
After running the generator, you will need to run rake db:migrate
to add tables to your database. You can start your app with bundle exec rails server
and install your app by visiting localhost.
The default and install generators have been updated to source Shopify API key and secret from a .env
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.
$ rails generate shopify_app:install
# or optionally with arguments:
$ rails generate shopify_app:install
Other 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, eg 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 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:shop_model
The install
generator doesn't create any database tables or models for you. If you are starting a new app its quite likely that you will want a shops table and model to store the tokens when your app is installed (most of our internally developed apps do!). This generator creates a shop model and a migration. This model includes the ShopifyApp::SessionStorage
concern which adds two methods to make it compatible as a SessionRepository
. After running this generator you'll notice the session_repository
in your config/initializers/shopify_app.rb
will be set to the Shop
model. This means that internally ShopifyApp will try and load tokens from this model.
Note that you will need to run rake db:migrate after this generator
$ rails generate shopify_app:home_controller
This generator creates an example home controller and view which fetches and displays products using the ShopifyAPI
$ 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
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
To enable per user authentication you need to update the omniauth.rb
initializer:
provider :shopify,
ShopifyApp.configuration.api_key,
ShopifyApp.configuration.secret,
scope: ShopifyApp.configuration.scope,
per_user_permissions: true
The current Shopify user will be stored in the rails session at session[:shopify_user]
This will change the type of token that Shopify returns and it will only be valid for a short time. Read more about Online access
here. Note that this means you won't be able to use this token to respond to Webhooks.
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 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.
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/intializers/omniauth.rb
:
strategy.options[:old_client_secret] = ShopifyApp.configuration.old_secret
ShopifyApp::SessionRepository
allows you as a developer to define how your sessions are retrieved and stored 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(shopify_session)
which stores the session and returns a unique identifier and self.retrieve(id)
which returns a ShopifyAPI::Session
for the passed id. See either the ShopifyApp::InMemorySessionStore
class or the ShopifyApp::SessionStorage
concern for examples.
If you only run the install generator then by default you will have an in memory store but it won't work on multi-server environments including Heroku. If you ran all the generators including the shop_model generator then the Shop
model itself will be the SessionRepository
. If you look at the implementation of the generated shop model you'll see that this gem provides a concern for the SessionRepository
. You can use this concern on any model that responds to shopify_domain
, shopify_token
and api_version
.
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
.
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
.
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' %>
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 you 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.