Performing OAuth

Once the library is set up for your project, you'll be able to use it to start adding functionality to your app. The first thing your app will need to do is to obtain an access token to the Admin API by performing the OAuth process.

To do this, you can follow the steps below. For more information on authenticating a Shopify app please see the Types of Authentication page.

Session Persistence

Session persistence is deprecated from the ShopifyAPI library gem since version 12.3.0. The responsibility of session storage typically is fulfilled by the web framework middleware. This API library's focus is on making requests and facilitate session creation.

⚠️ If you're not using the ShopifyApp gem, you may use ShopifyAPI to perform OAuth to create sessions, but you must implement your own session storage method to persist the session information to be used in authenticated API calls.

Supported Types of OAuth

Tip

If you are building an embedded app, we strongly recommend using Shopify managed installation with token exchange instead of the authorization code grant flow.

Token Exchange
- OAuth flow by exchanging the current user's session token (shopify id token) for an access token.
- Recommended and is only available for embedded apps
- Doesn't require redirects, which makes authorization faster and prevents flickering when loading the app
- Access scope changes are handled by Shopify managed installation
Authorization Code Grant Flow
- OAuth flow that requires the app to redirect the user to Shopify for installation/authorization of the app to access the shop's data.
- Suitable for non-embedded apps
- Installations, and access scope changes are managed by the app

Note about Rails

If using in the Rails framework, we highly recommend you use the shopify_app gem to perform OAuth, you won't have to follow the instructions below to start your own OAuth flow.

See ShopifyApp's documentation on session storage

If you aren't using Rails, you can look at how the ShopifyApp gem handles OAuth flow for further examples:

Token Exchange Flow
- Token Exchange
  - Completes token exchange flow to get online and offline access tokens
Authorization Code Grant Flow
- Session Controller
  - Triggering and redirecting user to begin OAuth flow
- Callback Controller
  - Creating / storing sessions to complete the OAuth flow

Performing OAuth

Token Exchange

Steps

Enable Shopify managed installation by configuring your scopes through the Shopify CLI.
Perform token exchange to get an access token.

Perform Token Exchange

Use ShopifyAPI::Auth::TokenExchange to exchange a session token (Shopify Id Token) for an access token.

Input

Parameter	Type	Required?	Default Value	Notes
`shop`	`String`	Yes	-	A Shopify domain name in the form `{exampleshop}.myshopify.com`.
`session_token`	`String`	Yes	-	The session token (Shopify Id Token) provided by App Bridge in either the request 'Authorization' header or URL param when the app is loaded in Admin.
`requested_token_type`	`TokenExchange::RequestedTokenType`	Yes	-	The type of token requested. Online: `TokenExchange::RequestedTokenType::ONLINE_ACCESS_TOKEN` or offline: `TokenExchange::RequestedTokenType::OFFLINE_ACCESS_TOKEN`.

Output

This method returns the new ShopifyAPI::Auth::Session object from the token exchange, your app should store this Session object to be used later when making authenticated API calls.

Example

# `shop` is the shop domain name - "this-is-my-example-shop.myshopify.com"
# `session_token` is the session token provided by App Bridge either in:
#   - the request 'Authorization' header as `Bearer this-is-the-session_token`
#   - or as a URL param `id_token=this-is-the-session_token`

def authenticate(shop, session_token)
  session = ShopifyAPI::Auth::TokenExchange.exchange_token(
     shop: shop,
     session_token: session_token,
     requested_token_type: ShopifyAPI::Auth::TokenExchange::RequestedTokenType::OFFLINE_ACCESS_TOKEN,
     # or if you're requesting an online access token:
     # requested_token_type: ShopifyAPI::Auth::TokenExchange::RequestedTokenType::ONLINE_ACCESS_TOKEN,
   )

  SessionRepository.store_session(session)
end

Authorization Code Grant Flow

Steps

Add a route to start OAuth
Add an Oauth callback route
Begin OAuth
Handle OAuth Callback

1. Add a route to start OAuth

Add a route to your app to start the OAuth process.

class ShopifyAuthController < ApplicationController
  def login
    # This method will trigger the start of the OAuth process
  end
end

2. Add an OAuth callback route

After the app is authenticated with Shopify, the Shopify platform will send a request back to your app using this route (which you will provide as the redirect_path parameter to begin_auth method, in step 3 - Begin OAuth).

class ShopifyCallbackController < ApplicationController
  def callback
    # This callback method will be called once user grants permission to this app from Shopify Admin.
  end

3. Begin OAuth

Use ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth.begin_auth method to start OAuth process for your app.

Input

Parameter	Type	Required?	Default Value	Notes
`shop`	`String`	Yes	-	A Shopify domain name in the form `{exampleshop}.myshopify.com`.
`redirect_path`	`String`	Yes	-	The redirect path used for callback with a leading `/`. The route should be allowed under the app settings.
`is_online`	`Boolean`	No	`true`	`true` if the session is online and `false` otherwise.

Output

begin_auth method will return a hash result in the form of:

{
  auth_route: String,
  cookie: ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth::SessionCookie,
}

Key	Type	Notes
`auth_route`	`String`	URI that will be used for redirecting the user to the Shopify Authentication screen
`cookie`	`ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth::SessionCookie`	A session cookie to store on the user's browser.

Example

Your app should take the returned values from the begin_auth method and:

Set the cookie in the user's browser. We strongly recommend that you use secure, httpOnly cookies for this to help prevent session hijacking.
Redirect the user to authorization url defined by auth_route.
- This will redirect the user to the Shopify Admin page to authorize/grant permission to the app.

An example is shown below in a Rails app but these steps could be applied in any framework:

class ShopifyAuthController < ApplicationController
  def login
    shop = request.headers["Shop"]

    # Builds the authorization URL route to redirect the user to
    auth_response = ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth.begin_auth(shop: domain, redirect_path: "/auth/callback")

    # Store the authorization cookie
    cookies[auth_response[:cookie].name] = {
      expires: auth_response[:cookie].expires,
      secure: true,
      http_only: true,
      value: auth_response[:cookie].value
    }

    # Redirect the user to "auth_response[:auth_route]" to allow user to grant the app permission
    # This will lead the user to the Shopify Authorization page
    head 307
    response.set_header("Location", auth_response[:auth_route])
  end
end

⚠️ You can see a concrete example in the ShopifyApp gem's SessionController.

4. Handle OAuth Callback

When the user grants permission to the app in Shopify admin, they'll be redirected back to the app's callback route (configured in Step 2 - Add an OAuth callback route).

Use ShopifyAPI::AuthL::Oauth.validate_auth_callback method to finalize the OAuth process.

Input

Parameter	Type	Notes
`cookies`	`Hash`	All browser cookies in a hash format with key and value as `String`
`auth_query`	`ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth::AuthQuery`	An `AuthQuery` containing the authorization request information used to validate the request.

Output

This method returns a hash containing the new session and a cookie to be set in the browser in form of:

{
    session: ShopifyAPI::Auth::Session,
    cookie: ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth::SessionCookie,
}

Key	Type	Notes
`session`	`ShopifyAPI::Auth::Session`	A session object that contains necessary information to identify the session like `shop`, `access_token`, `scope`, etc.
`cookie`	`ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth::SessionCookie`	A session cookie to store on the user's browser.

Example

Your app should call validate_auth_callback to construct the Session object and cookie that will be used later for authenticated API requests.

Call validate_auth_callback to construct Session and SessionCookie.
Update browser cookies with the new value for the session.
Store the Session object to be used later when making authenticated API calls.
- See Make a GraphQL API call, or Make a REST API call for examples on how to use the result Session object.

An example is shown below in a Rails app but these steps could be applied in any framework:

def callback
  begin
    # Create an AuthQuery object from the request parameters,
    # and pass the list of cookies to `validate_auth_callback`
    auth_result = ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth.validate_auth_callback(
      cookies: cookies.to_h,
      auth_query: ShopifyAPI::Auth::Oauth::AuthQuery.new(
        request.parameters.symbolize_keys.except(:controller, :action)
      )
    )

    # Update cookies with the authorized access token from result
    cookies[auth_result[:cookie].name] = {
      expires: auth_result[:cookie].expires,
      secure: true,
      http_only: true,
      value: auth_result[:cookie].value
    }

    # Store the Session object if your app has a DB/file storage for session persistence
    # This session object could be retrieved later to make authenticated API requests to Shopify
    MyApp::SessionRepository.store_session(auth_result[:session])

    puts("OAuth complete! New access token: #{auth_result[:session].access_token}")

    head 307
    response.set_header("Location", "<some-redirect-url>")
  rescue => e
    puts(e.message)
    head 500
  end
end

⚠️ You can see a concrete example in the ShopifyApp gem's CallbackController.

Using OAuth Session to make authenticated API calls

Once your OAuth flow is complete, and you have persisted your Session object, you may use that Session object to make authenticated API calls.

Example:

def make_api_request(shop)
  # 1. Retrieve the Session object stored from previous step
  session = MyApp::SessionRepository.retrieve_session_for_shop(shop)

  # 2. Create API client with the session information
  # session must be type `ShopifyAPI::Auth::Session`
  graphql_client = ShopifyAPI::Clients::Graphql::Admin.new(session: session)

  # 3. Use API client to make queries
  response = graphql_client.query(query: MY_API_QUERY)

  # 4. Use the response for your app
  ...
end

Setting `active_session`

Alternatively, if you don't want to keep having to retrieve a Session object for a shop, you may set ShopifyAPI::Context.active_session. All of the API client classes will use the active_session if the session passed in is nil.

Example:

#### Configuration
def configure_app
  # This method is called before making authenticated API calls
  session = retrieve_session_from_file # your implementation of retrieving a session

  # Activate session to be used in all API calls
  # session must be type `ShopifyAPI::Auth::Session`
  ShopifyAPI::Context.activate_session(session)

end

#### Using clients to make authenticated API calls
def make_api_request
  # 1. Create API client without session information
  # The graphql_client will use `ShopifyAPI::Context.active_session` when making API calls
  graphql_client = ShopifyAPI::Clients::Graphql::Admin.new

  # 2. Use API client to make queries
  ...
end

⚠️ See following docs on how to use the API clients:

Make a GraphQL API call
Make a REST API call

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oauth.md

oauth.md

Performing OAuth

Table of contents

Session Persistence

Supported Types of OAuth

Note about Rails

Performing OAuth

Token Exchange

Steps

Perform Token Exchange

Input

Output

Example

Authorization Code Grant Flow

Steps

1. Add a route to start OAuth

2. Add an OAuth callback route

3. Begin OAuth

Input

Output

Example

4. Handle OAuth Callback

Input

Output

Example

Using OAuth Session to make authenticated API calls

Setting `active_session`

Files

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Performing OAuth

Table of contents

Session Persistence

Supported Types of OAuth

Note about Rails

Performing OAuth

Token Exchange

Steps

Perform Token Exchange

Input

Output

Example

Authorization Code Grant Flow

Steps

1. Add a route to start OAuth

2. Add an OAuth callback route

3. Begin OAuth

Input

Output

Example

4. Handle OAuth Callback

Input

Output

Example

Using OAuth Session to make authenticated API calls

Setting active_session

Setting `active_session`