How to Access E-commerce Data with Shopify API in Python

Install Necessary Libraries

• Ensure you have Python installed on your machine. You will need the requests library to interact with the Shopify API. If it's not already installed, you can add it via pip:

pip install requests

Generate API Credentials

• Once you have access to the Shopify admin, go to "Apps", and create a private app which will allow you to obtain API credentials. Ensure correct API permissions are allocated to access the required data.
• Note the API Key and Password. You'll use these to authenticate your requests.

Set Up the Basic Configuration

• To communicate with the Shopify API, you'll need the store's URL along with your API credentials. Here's a basic example showing the setup:

import requests

SHOP_NAME = "your-shop-name"
API_KEY = "your-api-key"
PASSWORD = "your-password"

BASE_URL = f"https://{API_KEY}:{PASSWORD}@{SHOP_NAME}.myshopify.com/admin/api/2023-10"

Fetching Data: Products Example

• To fetch data such as products, construct a GET request to the relevant endpoint. Here’s how you can retrieve products:

def get_products():
    endpoint = f"{BASE_URL}/products.json"
    response = requests.get(endpoint)

    if response.status_code == 200:
        products = response.json()
        return products
    else:
        raise Exception(f"Failed to fetch products: {response.status_code}")

products_data = get_products()
print(products_data)

Handling Request Errors

• It's vital to handle HTTP request errors. The Shopify API might limit requests or return errors that need managing. Implement error handling for robustness:

try:
    products_data = get_products()
except Exception as e:
    print(f"An error occurred: {e}")

Accessing Other Endpoints

• You can similarly access other Shopify endpoints like orders or customers. Refer to Shopify's API documentation to identify the proper endpoint and request parameters. Replace the endpoint in the function for different data:
• For Orders:

def get_orders():
    endpoint = f"{BASE_URL}/orders.json"
    response = requests.get(endpoint)

    if response.status_code == 200:
        orders = response.json()
        return orders
    else:
        raise Exception(f"Failed to fetch orders: {response.status_code}")

orders_data = get_orders()
print(orders_data)

Optimize Your Calls with Pagination

• Shopify API results are paginated. By default, it returns a limited number of items per request. Use pagination to collect large data sets:

def get_all_products():
    products = []
    endpoint = f"{BASE_URL}/products.json?limit=250"
    response = requests.get(endpoint)

    while response.status_code == 200 and response.json().get('products'):
        products_batch = response.json().get('products', [])
        products.extend(products_batch)

        # Shopify provides pagination through the Link header
        link_header = response.headers.get('Link')
        if not link_header or 'rel="next"' not in link_header:
            break
        
        # Extract the next URL from the link_header
        next_url = # appropriately parse the next_url from the link_header
        response = requests.get(next_url)

    return products

all_products = get_all_products()
print(len(all_products))

Secure Your API Calls

• For security, consider moving sensitive information like API keys and passwords to environment variables or secure configuration files. You can use a library like `python-decouple` to manage environment variables.

from decouple import config

API_KEY = config('SHOPIFY_API_KEY')
PASSWORD = config('SHOPIFY_PASSWORD')

Review Shopify API Limits

• Shopify imposes API call limits, generally allowing two calls per second. To handle this, you may need to implement throttling in your request functions:

import time

def throttled_request(endpoint):
    try:
        response = requests.get(endpoint)
        if response.status_code == 429:  # Too Many Requests
            time.sleep(1)  # Back off and retry
            return throttled_request(endpoint)
        return response
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        print(f"An error occurred: {e}")

Conclusion

• Accessing e-commerce data using Shopify's API in Python involves setting up basic configurations, handling data through API endpoints like products or orders, managing limitations like pagination and API call limits, and ensuring secure and robust error handling.