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I built a print-on-demand system that integrates into Shopify stores. To vent a little... * I can concur that their API is unreliable. About 1 in 5 of my CI ru

I built a print-on-demand system that integrates into Shopify stores. To vent a little... * I can concur that their API is unreliable. About 1 in 5 of my CI runs fail with mysterious 500 errors. It's infuriating. * The support channels are a wasteland. Do not expect help. * The documentation is super thin. At first glance it looks decent - there's the objects, there's the fields those objects have. But it's missing all the details about how those fields are supposed to work. Example: A Fulfillment has a tracking_numbers array, but there doesn't seem to be any way to add multiple tracking numbers. The docs are silent, and questions about this in the support channels remain unanswered. For years. * There are two completely different APIs (graphql and REST), which do not have equal capabilities. If Shopify is planning on deprecating one of them, they should give us guidance. * The API is inconsistent. I count at least FIVE different representations of an Address structure, each slightly different for no apparent reason. Eg "country" vs "countryCode". This is the kind of thing that creeps into projects in dynamic languages when nobody's paying attention. * There's a lot of overengineered stuff. The Metadata API is really unpleasant compared to Stripe's simpler approach. * There's no way to set up common shipping scenarios like "$N for first item, $M for each additional". I could go on. But I will say this: It's better than Etsy's API. Though Etsy is finally working on it again, so maybe that will change.

theturtletalks 6y ago
Hey, I'm building an e-commerce operations platform that let's you connect any e-commerce platform to fulfillment and 3PL platforms. We're integrating with Printly and the like right now. Is there an API for your platform yet?
- stickfigure 6y ago
  Yes, although you'll probably find that we are not an obvious fit for that model. Company info is in my profile.
disantlor 6y ago
There are definitely several ways to set up complex Shopify shipping situations. My livelihood is in good part based on it.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  Oh sure... I make everything one pound, and create fixed rates for 1#, 2#, 3#, etc... but there's a (low) finite number of entries you can add, so if someone orders more than N units, they get free shipping for the rest. It's a terrible workaround. Etsy does not have this problem. Or perhaps you are thinking about creating a carrier service, so Shopify will fetch shipping prices in realtime? That's for people on Shopify Plus plans, which costs $2k/mo+. Actually, that's not quite true! There's a wholly undocumented option for non-plus merchants to get the carrier service feature enabled on their account for a monthly fee of something like $25. They have to reach out to support. Everything with Shopify is like this. Great for consultants who have already internalized all this knowledge, sure.
  - disantlor 6y ago
    but why should it necessarily be that much different? better documentation sure, always. but in my experience Shopify solves ~70% of the cases extremely well and I, having learned some of the quirks, have very little problem filling the gaps. I will say, the app development, to the point of the article, IS a bit annoying hah. But I'm very surprised by all these API complaints. I think the API is very nice; maybe not quite Stripe-level but highly effective.
    - yunohn 6y ago
      So your job is being a gatekeeper for Shopify’s shipping setup capabilities?
8note 6y ago
Naming differences are the product of having names and enough surface area to where you can't remember all of what's in the API at once imo. You can get variations in 2 digit country code vs 3 digit vs some other representation easily regardless of what language you're using
- ylyn 6y ago
  If you had a statically-typed language, you could have a single Address type and that's that.
  - dreamer7 6y ago
    That is definitely easier to work with but may not solve all problems. In the parent example, they mention Country and CountryCode. What if one team decided that they needed codes and the other needs the full name? There has to be company-level standards to ensure consistency. And it is so hard to enforce standards unless a culture of revisiting and generalising things is created while growing from a small team.
    - HighlandSpring 6y ago
      It is not hard to standardise an Address type across a company (they are a shopping product after all) Or better yet, define which types are required and which are optional so at least naming is consistent
      - km3r 6y ago
        As someone who has worked on addresses for a large corperate system, addresses can get very complicated. International localization, formatting, different usages (shipping, billing, mailing, taxes), multiple addresses per user, and security all start to add up, with many different part of the application having different requirements. Even as the team that owned addresses we debated whether new use cases should spin up their own implemention. Though it's pretty interesting seeing how different countries do addresses differently.for example, users in South Korea expect to be able to search for addresses and just enter an apartment number. Some countries went to near 9 lines of info.
arduinomancer 6y ago
The inconsistency thing is likely just different teams/people working on the API. I’d bet very few people who work there know all the APIs that exist.
- ARandomerDude 6y ago
  Regardless of the proximate cause, it's very frustrating when companies don't prioritize good documentation.
flower-giraffe 6y ago
> About 1 in 5 of my CI runs fail with mysterious 500 errors. It's infuriating. I see these daily, with errors that suggest the cloudflare layer is unable to connect to origin.
mrgreenfur 6y ago
This is a great list, ill add in that there is no partner UI for billing obejects. If you lose a secret token then no one can access it, even though shopify has it on record and you have to beg the client to press uninstall. Support is friendly and prompt but knows nothing about the apis.

theturtletalks 6y ago

Hey, I'm building an e-commerce operations platform that let's you connect any e-commerce platform to fulfillment and 3PL platforms. We're integrating with Printly and the like right now. Is there an API for your platform yet?

stickfigure 6y ago
Yes, although you'll probably find that we are not an obvious fit for that model. Company info is in my profile.

disantlor 6y ago

There are definitely several ways to set up complex Shopify shipping situations. My livelihood is in good part based on it.

stickfigure 6y ago
Oh sure... I make everything one pound, and create fixed rates for 1#, 2#, 3#, etc... but there's a (low) finite number of entries you can add, so if someone orders more than N units, they get free shipping for the rest. It's a terrible workaround. Etsy does not have this problem. Or perhaps you are thinking about creating a carrier service, so Shopify will fetch shipping prices in realtime? That's for people on Shopify Plus plans, which costs $2k/mo+. Actually, that's not quite true! There's a wholly undocumented option for non-plus merchants to get the carrier service feature enabled on their account for a monthly fee of something like $25. They have to reach out to support. Everything with Shopify is like this. Great for consultants who have already internalized all this knowledge, sure.
- disantlor 6y ago
  but why should it necessarily be that much different? better documentation sure, always. but in my experience Shopify solves ~70% of the cases extremely well and I, having learned some of the quirks, have very little problem filling the gaps. I will say, the app development, to the point of the article, IS a bit annoying hah. But I'm very surprised by all these API complaints. I think the API is very nice; maybe not quite Stripe-level but highly effective.
  - yunohn 6y ago
    So your job is being a gatekeeper for Shopify’s shipping setup capabilities?

8note 6y ago

Naming differences are the product of having names and enough surface area to where you can't remember all of what's in the API at once imo. You can get variations in 2 digit country code vs 3 digit vs some other representation easily regardless of what language you're using

ylyn 6y ago
If you had a statically-typed language, you could have a single Address type and that's that.
- dreamer7 6y ago
  That is definitely easier to work with but may not solve all problems. In the parent example, they mention Country and CountryCode. What if one team decided that they needed codes and the other needs the full name? There has to be company-level standards to ensure consistency. And it is so hard to enforce standards unless a culture of revisiting and generalising things is created while growing from a small team.
  - HighlandSpring 6y ago
    It is not hard to standardise an Address type across a company (they are a shopping product after all) Or better yet, define which types are required and which are optional so at least naming is consistent
    - km3r 6y ago
      As someone who has worked on addresses for a large corperate system, addresses can get very complicated. International localization, formatting, different usages (shipping, billing, mailing, taxes), multiple addresses per user, and security all start to add up, with many different part of the application having different requirements. Even as the team that owned addresses we debated whether new use cases should spin up their own implemention. Though it's pretty interesting seeing how different countries do addresses differently.for example, users in South Korea expect to be able to search for addresses and just enter an apartment number. Some countries went to near 9 lines of info.

arduinomancer 6y ago

The inconsistency thing is likely just different teams/people working on the API. I’d bet very few people who work there know all the APIs that exist.

ARandomerDude 6y ago
Regardless of the proximate cause, it's very frustrating when companies don't prioritize good documentation.

flower-giraffe 6y ago

> About 1 in 5 of my CI runs fail with mysterious 500 errors. It's infuriating. I see these daily, with errors that suggest the cloudflare layer is unable to connect to origin.

mrgreenfur 6y ago

This is a great list, ill add in that there is no partner UI for billing obejects. If you lose a secret token then no one can access it, even though shopify has it on record and you have to beg the client to press uninstall. Support is friendly and prompt but knows nothing about the apis.