Building a Node.js Application for Shopify Integration

Benefits of Using Shopify

Shopify offers a range of benefits, including a high-grade user experience, great frontend design, and effective marketing strategies. With Shopify, businesses can create an amazing shopping experience for their customers.

Integrating with Shopify

Third-party developers can extend the base functionality of Shopify by creating apps that integrate with the platform. There are several ways to integrate with Shopify, including:

• Extending new features in the Shopify admin dashboard
• Integrating with Shopify APIs, such as the admin API
• Creating custom applications to meet specific business needs

Setting up a Node.js Project with TypeScript

To get started, we need to set up a Node.js project with TypeScript. The requirements include:

• A Shopify partner account and a newly created application
• A development store for testing themes and applications
• A Node.js package manager, such as npm or Yarn
• The latest version of Chrome or Firefox
• ngrok, for serving our app globally via the command line

Installing Node.js Types for TypeScript

We’ll install the DefinitelyTyped type definition for our application. We’ll also create a tsconfig.json file to hold the options for our TypeScript compiler.

npm install --save-dev @types/node

Create a tsconfig.json file with the following content:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "es6",
    "module": "commonjs",
    "sourceMap": true,
    "outDir": "build"
  }
}

Compiling Our TypeScript Code

We’ll use the tsc command to compile our TypeScript code. The compiled JavaScript code will be generated in the build folder.

tsc

Adding Dependencies and Scripts

We’ll add dependencies, such as ts-node and nodemon, to enable cold reloading in our application. We’ll also add a script to manage nodemon.

npm install --save-dev ts-node nodemon

Add the following script to your package.json file:

"scripts": {
  "start": "nodemon --exec ts-node index.ts"
}

Initializing Our Application

In our index.ts file, we’ll start building our application. We’ll import the necessary dependencies and initialize our application.

import express from 'express';

const app = express();

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server started on port 3000');
});

Hosting the Server

We’ll use ngrok to host our local server and make it publicly available.

ngrok http 3000

Creating a New Application in Shopify’s Partner Dashboard

We’ll navigate to the Shopify Partners dashboard and create a new application. We’ll input our desired name and click the Create button.

Developing Our Node.js Application

We’ll run back to our IDE and continue developing our application inside the index.ts file. We’ll define two endpoints: one to receive the name of the shop and create a nonce, and another to handle the callback from Shopify.

app.get('/install', (req, res) => {
  // Handle install request
});

app.get('/callback', (req, res) => {
  // Handle callback request
});

Testing Our Application

We’ll test our application by sending the URL to prospective merchants to install our application in their Shopify store.