Shopify Development Categories

• Apps
  • Extend Shopify’s core functionality with apps that integrate into Shopify’s admin, online store, checkout and more.
• Themes
  • Build custom themes
• Headless
  • Take store customization further with Hydrogen, a React-based framework for headless commerce.

Apps

Shopify Admin

• Create apps in the stores "backend" where the store owner manages their business

Embedded app home

• Creating an embedded app in the store owners backend
• It is the primary place your application will live
• This is where you render your app UI. It is rendered in an iFrame on web and a Webview on mobile

Polaris

• UI library with prebuilt themes and components to use in your app
• Gives your app a consistent look with the rest of Shopify UI

App Bridge

• Allows you to communicate directly with Shopify Admin and create UI elements outside of your app surface (iFrame or Webview)
  • Navigation elements, modals, save bars, etc

Admin Actions

• Create workflows that are able to be launched from various different places in Shopify Admin that are outside of your app (ex product page).
• Can be triggered from More Actions and shows a modal with your custom code / logic.
• After they are close the page updates with the data from the action

Admin Blocks

• Create custom UI that is rendered in the main pages in admin
  • Product, Customer, Orders, etc
• Allow users to edit information in your app & page data
• Users have to manually add the blocks to these pages

Admin Links

• Links from main pages in admin to pages in your app

Flow

• An app that allows store owners to create automations for their store
• You can write custom code to interact with Flow

Checkout

Checkout UI Extension

• Create apps that hook into the stores checkout flow

Shopify Function

• Hook into the Shopify backend with writing custom logic
• Injects these functions into Shopifys backend
• Has to be written in a language that can be compiled into web assembly (Rust, Javascript)
• Used for discounting, product bundling, delivery and payment rules, checkout & cart validation. More to come on this

Post-Purchase Product Offers

• Displayed to customers right after they complete a purchase.
• Can be used for gathering reviews, surveys, feedback, donations, etc
• Created with App Bridge
• Stored on Shopify CDN

Customer Accounts

• Allows customers to view order history, status, etc

Online Store

• Put your app into the store's online storefront

Theme App Extension

• Display dynamic elements on their storefront themes without requiring store owners to touch any code
• Shows your app in the theme editor / customizer
• App Blocks
  • Used to put content on the webpage
• App Embed Blocks
  • Used when your are injecting just logic, floating, or overlaid elements

App Proxy

• Take request to Shopify and redirect the request to your app server
• Display data on merchants store

Custom Data

• Allows you to extend existing data models to include more specific fields

Metafields

• Add additional information to a Shopify Resource (product, collection, etc)
• Can be accessed via Liquid, Storefront API, & the Admin API

Metaobject

• Create custom data structures in Shopify
• Can be associated with a Shopify resource but can also exist on their own
• Can be accessed via Liquid, Storefront API, & the Admin API

APIs

Storefront API

• Unauthenticated
• Used for storefronts

Admin API

• Authenticated
• API for extending Shopify Admin

Themes

Liquid

• Templating language used for themes
• Liquid Cheat Sheet

Headless

Hydrogen

• Gives you complete control over the frontend
• Headless frontend that uses Shopify backend

Oxygen

• Hosting for hydrogen
• Run on the edge
• Can have multiple environments and connects to Github for CI/CD workflows