Shadowing Practice: Start building Shopify apps, FAST - Learn English Speaking with Video

In this video, I'm going to show you how you can get started building Shopify apps.

I'm going to walk you through setting up your first Shopify development store and your first Shopify app, and I'm going to use gadgets to do it

because it abstracts a lot of Shopify's boilerplate and allows me to get started building quickly.

Let's get started.

Okay, so I'm going to get started here on the Shopify Partners landing page.

If you haven't already created a new Partners account, you need to go ahead and do that.

That's at shopfi.com slash partners.

The link is in the video description.

I already have a partner's account, so I'm just going to log in and I'll select my Riley Test Stuff account.

And that brings me to this partner's dashboard.

Now there's lots of different features and functionality built into this dashboard.

I'm going to focus on two main tabs, and that'll be the stores tab, where I can create development stores for testing my apps.

And then the apps tab, which are my apps, where I can actually manage the apps that I am building and testing.

So I'm going to click on stores to start.

You see I've already created some development stores but you can go ahead

and click add store and create development store to create a new one.

I'm gonna start by creating a store to test and build

and I'll give my store a name I'll call it cart transform testing.

Perfect.

You can select developer preview if you'd like.

Shopify has some more information if you click on this link about developer previews.

I am gonna go ahead and select cart transform

which you may have guessed from my store name and that's simply because I don't have a cart transform dev store yet.

Another popular one is checkout extensibility.

Maybe not necessarily for your first development store but it's not a bad idea to select that option as well.

It allows you to build some of Shopify's latest and greatest checkout features.

Finally I'm going to go ahead and start with test data

which just gives me some sample product order and customer data so I'm not starting from scratch.

Normally if you select create with an empty store you need to go ahead and upload your own products.

I'm going to skip that step.

So let's go ahead and create this development store.

Takes a little while to spin up.

But once it is created I'm redirected right to my new store.

My development store has been set up and I have been redirected to this back-end admin portal.

And this admin is what merchants use to manage and customize their stores.

So you can see if I click on products, these are where the sample products have been generated.

I can browse through them.

Same with customers.

There's some sample customers generated for me.

And right at the bottom, you'll notice there is an apps section.

So because this is a brand new shop, I haven't installed any apps yet we're about to get to that soon

but this is where my app will be available to merchants it will be embedded right in this admin portal

so that they can customize how their shop works

if i do hover over this online store option

and click on this icon this opens the shopify store front

so this is what the store will actually look like to buyers to people browsing the store

when they visit it

so you can see i can click on a product add it to the cart go through the checkout process

if you are interested in doing development for storefront that's called theme development

and if you are interested in doing kind of an entire storefront theme my tutorial here isn't going to cover

that so there is other videos there's other materials shopify documentation

that you'll want to take a look at

when it comes to actually developing themes

if you only want to develop small little pieces of storefront functionality

that can be done with shopify's theme extensions and

that is very relevant to the little walkthrough i'm about to go through

so you can use theme extensions

when you're building custom admin apps i will just flip back to my admin portal here

so i'm at the point now my development store is set

up got my admin things are looking pretty good i want to actually go ahead

and create a new app so i need to go back to my partner's dashboard here and

because it is my most used page in the partner's dashboard

it is going to auto complete right to the apps page so you see i've already selected it here

I already have a list of apps I've used for building and testing various things.

Your list might be empty right now.

So I'm going to go ahead and create a new app.

I'm going to create an app manually because I'm going to use Gadget to actually write the code for my application.

And the reason I'm using Gadget is because it is a hosted and auto-scaled development platform.

It's going to give me a full stack application.

So that's a Postgres database, node backend and react front end.

And there's a built in Shopify connection to handle a lot of Shopify's boilerplate.

So for example, there's going to be authentication handling, front end session token handling,

as well as things like webhook subscription and a historical data sync.

So Gadget's going to handle all that for me.

You can also create apps through Shopify CLI.

It gives you a remix template i'm not going to go into

that at all there's plenty of content around creating remake

that remix apps if you're interested i'm going to go ahead

and create that manually and i'll just give it a name my first app

and press create so that's wonderful i'm almost ready to set up my new gadget app

before I get into

that I will say there are two types of Shopify apps I'm going to go ahead

and click choose distribution and these are the two different distribution methods the first is public

so if you build a public app it will be available on the Shopify app store

or it can be unlisted but this means

that anyone who has a link to your app can install it and use it on their store

usually you're charging either a one-time fee

or a monthly subscription fee for merchants to be able to

use your app's functionality the second type of app are called

custom apps i recommend getting started with a custom app

if you can this is great opportunity for freelance work

because you're writing usually a single piece of custom functionality for a single merchant

so you don't have to deal with shopify's billing apis you don't have to deal with data tenancy

or multi-tenancy like you would do in public apps it is

an easier way to get started i'm not going to go

through this quite yet i will show you how to install

a custom distribution at the very end of this video though

so that's great i'm going to go back to my overview page i've got my client id in secret

that is what i need to set up my shopify connection in my gadget app

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so i'm going to create my new gadget app next.

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I will head over to gadget.new.

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If you don't have a gadget account you'll need to sign up first.

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I work here so I obviously do have an account.

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I'm going to select the Shopify app type, click next, and then enter a domain for my app.

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So I'll just call this my very first shopify.gadget.app

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and i'll click get started so this creates my new gadget app for me

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so this will give me a hosted postgres database node.js backend

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and react front end powered by veat like i mentioned before the first thing i notice is

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that there's this connect shopify button so i'm going to go ahead

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and do that so i've shown you the parts of the partners dashboard

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that is always how we recommend connecting to shopify you can also connect directly from

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that store admin however it is limited in features and functionality

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so we always recommend going through the partners dashboard even if you're just building for a single merchant

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you'll notice at the very bottom here we have client id and client secret

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those should look familiar because they're right here in my partners app

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so i just need to copy them over to gadget and then i'll press connect

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on this page i select what shopify scopes and data models i want to include in my app

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this is intimidating the first time you go about building a shopify app because the shopify api is

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huge you probably don't know what scopes and what models you actually need to build your app

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that's a-okay this connection is always editable later

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so you don't need to worry about making the right choices up front now before i actually select scopes

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and models i'm going to just quickly take a step back

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and talk about shopify's admin api so because we are building an app

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that is embedded in that store admin we're going to use the admin api to get and write data to shopify

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Of course, this can't be simple.

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Shopify has two versions of their admin API.

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There is a REST admin API and there is a GraphQL admin API.

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Both of them have shared resources.

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So if I go ahead on the REST API, I can click on products.

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You see there is a product data model.

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If I go into the GraphQL API.

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I find products and collections.

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Go to the objects and I can click on another product data model.

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If I go ahead and do a quick glance at these fields, see there's properties body HTML created at.

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They are not the same.

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So that is nice and convenient.

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The gadget data models are based on the REST API when available.

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There are some models that are only available in the GraphQL API

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and in that case we are fetching data using the GraphQL admin API.

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So I just want to note that it is a large API.

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It takes a while to get used to.

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Don't be intimidated.

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You can always edit your connection and gadget if you want different data models.

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If you don't want data models you can remove them from the connection

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so that is a okay

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so i'm just going to go over back to my gadget app i'm going to select my product read scope

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so i want to be able to read in product data into my app

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and i'm just going to select the product

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and i will select the product variant data models

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so you see as i did that my setup summary changed a bit

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so gadget is also going to automatically subscribe to shopify webhooks for me

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so you can see i am subscribing to some shop webhooks.

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So when a shop is updated or uninstalled, I will get a webhook for that, as well as my create, update, and delete product webhooks.

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So whenever a merchant changes the product in the admin, that could be a trigger for an action that I want to run as part of my app.

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So we are subscribing to webhooks for you.

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You also get an overview of the models that we are going to sync data for automatically.

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You can scroll down this page.

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We do have a heap of models available.

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So if you are getting into public app development at the very bottom, we also have billing resources.

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I'm just going to go ahead and press confirm with my product selections now.

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You'll notice that the product and product variant data models have been added to my app, as well as shop GDPR requests and sync models,

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which are added to every gadget app when you connect to Shopify.

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I'm going to get back to those in a little bit.

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I'm going to finish setting up my connection first.

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So we give you this app URL and redirection URL.

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I need to copy these values, go back to my partner's app, click on the app setup tab,

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and paste in this app URL and this redirection URL.

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And I will press save here.

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perfect so now my app is ready to be installed on my shop

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so i'm going to go back to overview i can go ahead

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and click select store in the test your app section

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and i'm going to go ahead

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and select my cart transform testing store my brand new development store

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so i haven't written a line of oauth code that's what's

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really great about gadget is it's going to handle all of the oauth for me

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so i can just directly install my app on a store so i'll just click the install app button

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and voila this is my embedded app you'll notice we're back

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in this store's admin under the app section there is my first app

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and this is just a shop information page this is actually a react front end

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that is included and hosted as part of your gadget project so if i go back to gadget here

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click on the front end folder and go to shoppage.jsx.

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This is the page that is actually powering that front end here.

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So you see there is a banner with a title.

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Your app is successfully connected to Shopify.

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If I go back here, my very first Shopify is successfully connected to Shopify.

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So this React front end is styled using Shopify's Polaris component library.

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Gadget automatically install this for you when you set up your connection to shopify so

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if i just go over to the polaris docs i will include a link to these docs in the description but

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if i click on components you can see there's lots of

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components you can use these to build native feeling apps so

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that your app blends in with the rest of the shopify admin

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which is really nice so

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if i scroll down here i should be able to find a banner component

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and that looks pretty familiar if i go back here

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so it is the same banner component it'll look the same as every other banner

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that is used in the admin if the app is built on polaris

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so that's wonderful the next thing i want to mention is webhooks

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so if i go back to my gadget app

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and click on my shopify product model you see a model is like a table in a database

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and we have these fields so these fields

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if we take a look at them

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and compare them to the product resource from the rest api they should match up so that is great

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we also have some crud actions generated automatically for you for this shopify product model

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so you see there's create update and delete actions there's also a read api

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if i go over across the code you can add custom code

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and this is your app back end in node.js so

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if you are writing custom functionality

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that happens whenever you create a product this is where you'd

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add it i'm not going to get into what the run

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and on success functions mean right now i'm not going to

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go through gadget stuff i do recommend going to our product tagger tutorial it will teach you more about gadget

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and less focus on shopify over here in the triggers section though, we do have Shopify webhooks as triggers.

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So whenever a product is created or updated, this create action can be run.

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And the reason update can also run this create action is I might go into the admin, update a product.

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If it doesn't exist in my database already, it'll create a new instance, a new record of this product.

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So let's test this out.

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I'm going to go to my admin, click on products, and I will just add a new product.

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I'm going to go ahead and call this t-shirt.

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I can enter a description if I want.

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I don't want to right now.

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Add media.

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So this would be like an image of my product.

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Set some pricing.

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Track quantity.

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I do need a skew in order to create a new product.

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Doesn't really matter what it is.

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So I'm okay with this.

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It's just a title right now.

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I'll press save.

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So this actually creates a new product in my shop and it'll fire that products create webhook.

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So if I go back to my Gadget app, I can go to my data page.

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You'll see that the t-shirt has been added to my database.

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So that's wonderful when I am creating or updating products.

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I might also want to get all of the products that are already installed or already created in a merchant store,

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and i can use gadgets data sync to do that so i'm going to scroll down click plugins shopify

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and then go to shop install so this is the app i already connected

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and i'm going to go ahead this is my store cart transform testing i'll hit the sync button

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so i'm manually triggering a sync now there is also a

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way to trigger a sync as soon as a merchant installs your app on a store

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and what this is going to do is pull in all

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of my product data from this store into my gadget database

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so that i can start using my data from my database to actually perform my app's functionality

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so i'll click on product click on data and you see

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that all of the data is now synced to my database

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so that's wonderful the Shopify API does have rate limits

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and gadget handles that for you

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so you don't have to worry about the number of products

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or orders or customers that a store already has gadget will sync all of

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that data as fast as it can and manage that rate limit

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so you don't have to worry about doing

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that yourself another nice benefit of using gadget so this is good I have

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synced data into my database I have my embedded front-end I

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think I'm probably ready at this point to go ahead

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and create a production version of my app let's say

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so I haven't actually built an app once again I will

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refer you to any of our other tutorials figure out what you want to build

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and then go ahead and build our app I'm gonna skip

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that part and just get to how do I release an app in production.

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So this is my development environment.

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Gadget also has a production environment I can use.

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So I actually need to go back to my partner's dashboard once again.

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I do need to create a new app, another new app.

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Call it my first production app.

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once again i get a client id and secret

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so i do want to copy these back to gadget i can go back to my connection

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and plugins shopify and there is this production box i just want to add my app credentials here

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so that's my client id my client secret i can confirm

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that i can go ahead and copy the app url and redirection url back to the shopify partners app

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click save go to overview now this is where i can go ahead

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and choose my app distribution so if i click on this choose distribution i can select the custom distribution

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this is just warning that my app can only be installed by a single store plus organization so I'm okay with that.

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And I need to enter my store's domain.

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So this is my cart transform testing store.

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I think I can actually just go ahead and copy this here.

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Perfect.

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So that's the admin link.

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You can allow multi-store install for a plus organization.

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I'm fine with that.

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So I'll generate a link.

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This is just a confirmation dialog.

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This can't be undone.

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so there we go i can copy this link to install

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my app on this particular store now there's one thing i need to do in gadget first

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and that is actually deploy my app to production so

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because there's two environments development and production i need to go ahead

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and take all my code and model changes

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and push them to my production environment before i install so i can just go to this deploy

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down at the bottom here, click deploy to production.

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And what this will do is minify and optimize all of my front end assets.

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It's going to set up a production database, run any migrations that need to run behind the scenes, and then restart the production app.

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Happens usually pretty quickly, which is nice.

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And it is one click, which is another nice thing.

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No messing around in an AWS or Google Cloud Console.

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So that's great.

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My app has been deployed.

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so now i can go ahead copy this install link paste

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it into yet another new tab i am going to go cart transform testing install my app

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and there we go so this is the production version of my app installed on my store now so that's great

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that was kind of a quick end-to-end build minus the build part of setting up my first shopify app so

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that was just a very quick intro to shopify app development

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i do recommend you actually go through the process of building an app next

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and included in this video description is a link to our product tagger tutorial

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and that'll walk you through actually modifying your database adding some custom backend code

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and then building a unique front end for your embedded app

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if you have any questions about getting started building shopify apps feel free to join our discord

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and reach out the link is in the video description until next time i hope you keep building more

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and coding less with gadget

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 307 sentences and 3759 words to shadow. The speech runs for 22:10. The speaker talks at a natural 170 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

admin /ˈædˌmɪn/ (noun) — Administration, or administrative work.
select /sɪˈlɛkt/ (verb) — To choose one or more elements of a set, especially a set of options.
install /ɪnˈstɔl/ (verb) — To connect, set up or prepare something for use
database /ˈdeɪtəˌbeɪs/ (noun) — A collection of (usually) organized information in a regular structure, usually but not necessarily in a machine-readable format accessible by a computer.
sync /sɪŋk/ (noun) — Harmony.
custom /ˈkʌstəm/ (noun) — Frequent repetition of the same behavior; way of behavior common to many; ordinary manner; habitual practice; method of doing, living or behaving.
connect /kəˈnɛkt/ (verb) — To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
merchant /ˈmɝt͡ʃənt/ (noun) — A person who traffics in commodities for profit.
cart /kɑɹt/ (noun) — A small, open, wheeled vehicle, drawn or pushed by a person or animal, often with two wheels on one axle, more often used for transporting goods than…
transform /tɹænsˈfɔɹm/ (verb) — To change greatly the appearance or form of.
functionality (noun) — The ability to do a task, performance, or execution; a set of functions that something is able or equipped to perform.
installed /ɪnˈstɔːld/ (verb) — readied for use
component /kəmˈpoʊ.nənt/ (noun) — A smaller, self-contained part of a larger entity. Often refers to a manufactured object that is part of a larger device.
trigger /ˈtɹɪɡɚ/ (noun) — A finger-operated lever used to fire a gun.
scope /skəʊp/ (noun) — The breadth, depth or reach of a subject; the extent of applicability or relevance; a domain, purview or remit.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

go ahead /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ (verb) — To proceed with; to begin.
go back to (verb) — To stem from; to originate in.
set up /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ (verb) — To make ready for use.
go through (verb) — To travel from one end of something to the other.
get into (verb) — To move into (an object), such that one ends up inside it.
go into (verb) — To get involved in; to investigate or explore.
deal with (verb) — To handle verbally or in some form of artistic expression; to address or discuss as a subject.
do in (verb) — To kill or end; to defeat.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 111 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I'll, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, walkthrough /ˈwɔːk.θɹuː/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, subscription /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/, collections /kəˈlɛkʃənz/, migration /maɪˈɡɹeɪʃ(ə)n/, confirmation /ˌkɑn.fəɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: manually /ˈmænj(u)əliː/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/, developer /dɪˈvɛləpɚ/, automobile /ˈɔː.tə.məˌbil/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like admin, select, install.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	haven't already created · I've already created · has been set
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is created · has been set · have been generated
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	tab, which are · anyone who has · quickly, which is

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

Grammar in this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?