I want to write an app for BigCommerce.
On the BigCommerce developer website, it says
"Before you begin, you’ll need a sandbox store. BigCommerce offers app developers free sandbox stores through its Technology Partner Program. To get your sandbox store, apply to become a BigCommerce Technology Partner. To be approved as a partner, you will need:
A website.
The ability to support users of your app."
I have written code to modify themes using trial stores in the past without being a partner. (That is not what I am trying to do here, I did that in the past. I am trying to write an app, ANY app. I made the statement about modifying themes with a trial store to emphasize the fact that I know that I can do that and I am assuming that the sandbox store has other capabilities like the ability to access the control panel code.) As far as I can see, an app will need to integrate with the control panel code that I cannot see from just having a store. So, I am assuming that the sandbox store issued when approved as a partner will have this capability.
I sent an email to BigCommerce asking about the approval requirements and their reply was this.
“you must prove that you are an application developer. This consists of a website where you showcase the functionality and current companies that are possibly using your app.
If you have issue with the requirement to be approved as a partner you will need to speak with the team that does the approvals. Partnersupport#bigcommerce.com”
This reply came from appstore#bigcommerce.com. Why wasn't my email forwarded to Partnersupport#bigcommerce.com to begin with so I could get a more comprehensive answer? I did forward it to them and I am still waiting for an answer.
I am confused about this requirement.
I want to write a BigCommerce app. Are they saying that I cannot write a BigCommerce app unless I have written a BigCommerce app before? Are they saying that I have to have written other apps in general? If I write a great app, why would it matter if it is my first?
After I write the app, I can set up a webpage for it and submit it for approval.
How can I "showcase the functionality and current companies that are possibly using your(my) app" when it is an app specifically written for BigCommerce?
I cannot write the app unless I understand how to integrate it with BigCommerce.
As far as I can see, I cannot understand how to integrate it with BigCommerce unless I am a partner.
Am I missing something here?
Is there some other way to approach this?
Sr Marketplace Mgr for BigCommerce here. I think there are a few items of clarification I can offer:
You do not have to have an existing BigCommerce app to be approved for a partnership. You do however need some evidence of your existing work. If you don't have a portfolio, website, or other examples of your development work, it's difficult for our Partners team to determine if you're a qualified developer.
Partner apps will not have access to modify the BC control panel or core code. Apps must use our public APIs to work with a BC user's data or settings. Any settings that are in the CP but not in our APIs can't be modified directly via an app.
Any storefront changes - such as an edit to a BC theme to display weight in two different units - would have to be done using HTML/CSS/JS in the theme itself. We don't have an API for programmatically changing a storefront theme at this time.
If any of your questions for BigCommerce involve your app or app development, you'll need to direct them to my team at appstore#bigcommerce.com. Directing questions regarding your app to partnersupport#bigcommerce.com will be forwarded to my team. That channel is primarily for questions around the Partners program in general, and won't be able to provide detailed support on the app developer program.
Hopefully this clears up some of your confusion, please reach out to me at appstore#bigcommerce.com and I'll be happy to respond myself if you need more info.
Cheers - John
Related
I recently changed a Shopify store to use a separate SPA using the storefront API. However the old 'online store' is still running as a separate website with some theme plugins etc. I'd like to remove this sales channel now that I'm using a custom app and the storefront API so that customers aren't confused as to why there are two websites running concurrently. However, when going to remove my online store, Shopify prompts me with an 'are you sure' modal that contains a warning that I won't be able to publish products and that they will send a request to a developer to delete personal customer information.
Obviously this is not what I want as the store is still running through storefront API and I still need everything on the Shopify admin side to remain intact and running. I tried getting support from Shopify about it but they just pointed me in the direction of the developer documentation. It's not really clear what impact deleting this sales channel would have? Any advice from someone who's done something similar would be greatly appreciated.
I'm fairly new to Shopify development and I'm trying to understand the best way to address our requirement. Apologies if some of these are basic questions.
The intent is to build an embedded public application that is intended to:
Have a floating component that's present on all pages on the online
store.
React to the user journey e.g. do stuff when the user adds
items to cart, completes a checkout, etc.
Send events to our server through the journey to allow our server to provide relevant
info, regardless of the store theme.
Have the ability to do this at an individual session level i.e. not all users will have the same experience.
I had a few questions around this:
Will it be possible to add the script to the main theme page and
have it load on all pages?
Is there a better alternative, particularly if the integration is supposed to be light-touch for admins?
What is the best way to get access to the individual user session from the app (assuming we can request the appropriate permissions as a part of the app installation)?
Is app bridge and session token required for this?
Is it possible to build this app using Angular? I understand Shopify framework is API-based and in theory any UI framework should work, but will a deeper linking with the user session be possible with Angular?
If we get enable web hooks for the various events, would it be a reliable way to detect events happening in the user journey? If so, what will be the correlation id between the events from the app and the web hooks?
Is it possible to detect the page the user is in, regardless of the theme? For example: Is there a way to identify that the user has added an item to the cart regardless of the theme used or is a webhook our best bet for those events?
Thanks in advance!
There is one thing you can do that would support most of your needs. Create an App, and set that App up with a Proxy. Shopify will then support the customer centric store theme to use a secure Ajax callback to your App using the proxy. So you can always call a proxy like /tool/customer_check with or without a customer ID from anywhere in the store.
You can imagine how powerful that is. You can return Liquid or more commonly, JSON. Boom! You're in business.
Of course, there are alternatives, all with the caveat your mileage may vary. None of this is predicated on any particular tech stack, meaning you can use what you like and know.
Kindly please suggest me the best way to single page checkout for Shopify store. As Shopify doesn't support any customization to the checkout page. Our requirement is to create a single page checkout. let me know how it is achievable.
Basic Shopify does not support customization in the checkout page. It is only available to Shopify plus Customer. Please visit here for more information.
You want a single page checkout you may need to create your own checkout process which will again require your store to be a Shopify Plus store. However, there are many Apps which can help you with single page checkout. You may want to use one of them if you don't want to build the whole functionality. You may want to check the below conversation - Link
You should not use Shopify if you want to make your own Checkout. Shopify is a hosted platform and they no longer want to let people play with the cash register themselves.
Of the few Apps that remain that do offer checkout outside of Shopify, you can see the hassles involved for customers. Why not just roll your own? If you can do your own checkout, hook up to an open source system instead where you can do that easier.
This is easy enough to do if you have the skills. Basically create an app that has a proxy page and change the theme's links replacing the paths to the checkout with paths to your proxied checkout.
There are a number of ways to collect payment info if you do this including using the draft_orders api to send the customer back to Shopify for final payment (not applicable for single page checkout but sometimes works well with the business reason that justifies a custom checkout in the first place)
You can also create a sales channel app that works much like the proxied app concept but has some more api capabilities.
However you really need a good business reason for doing this. Single page checkout was fashionable a few years ago but I've had as many customers go away from it as go towards it. Shopify has done quite a lot of work on their checkout and it works well (i.e. is fast and efficient) on all their supported platforms. Creating a custom checkout means your stuck maintaining it and are potentially increasing your liability if you take credit cards but have not received PCI certification.
I'm trying to write a simple clientside script that used the venmo api to automate some aspects of my account. The first step is getting an access token by going to the developer tab on the settings page. However, whenever I click, "Get Token", the page just redirects me to my profile settings tab with no further information. Going back to the developer tab, nothing has changed, and I still don't have an access token. I've already filled in every aspect of my profile; my name, phone number, profile image, everything. I can't find anyone else with a similar problem. What am I doing wrong?
Unfortunately, the Venmo API is no longer available to new developers. I was having the same problem and reached out to them directly to confirm. The message I received from one of their support staff yesterday:
Thanks so much for your interest in Venmo! Unfortunately at this time we have discontinued accepting new users of our Developer API. We want to support all of our friends in the development community as much as we can, but at this time we are focusing our efforts towards expanding on our recent launch of the ability to use Venmo to purchase items in select merchant apps. Going forward this will allow us to provide many of the same capabilities previously powered by our Developer API in a more streamlined experience for users and developers alike. I apologize for the inconvenience.
It's too bad.
I've seen different documentation on various forums and site on different ways of using Paypal api, here is a pretty useful link: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_ECOnMobileDevices&bn_r=o/, My question is a little different i do not want to use any of the Paypal libraries offered to us in my app, this is the link to libraries:https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/documentation-tools/sdk , I also do not want to gather any personal information, I want Paypal to take care of everything. So in other words I want to be able to open up a UIWebview to the Paypal's mobile site if possible (or if not the regular site will work) have to user log in with his credential or he can use the express checkout option and get back the transaction ID, or receipt what ever is available. I'm a little new to iOS and any help is appreciated.
If you don't want to use any libraries or API's, Express Checkout won't work for you.
Which does make it somewhat easier, as you can just use PayPal Website Payments Standard in a UIWebView instead.
For example; just open https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=your#email.tld&amount=1.99¤cy_code=GBP
This will start a 1.99 GBP payment to email#here.tld via PayPal, and automatically use a mobile layout.
If you subsequently want to receive transaction information; set up PayPal IPN on your account and use that to receive transaction-related events. This can be handled outside your app, and thus take away precious processing power to the server.
For an overview on getting started with PayPal IPN, have a look at https://www.paypal.com/ipn/
I would strongly suggest against trying to do transactions through paypal. If you look at the App Store Review Guidelines it states that
11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected