Changes for August 21'st API update

[development_s70]

I received an email a few weeks ago stating that the Shopify API will have some new changes (Aug 21st) that might effect the amount of data sent back in certain objects. The email came with an address to Shopify API developers to ask questions. I sent a message and never got a response...

In detail, what kind of things are effected in Order/Customer objects from this new update? We noticed in our app a few customers "brower_ip" field was coming back null. 

As you know some customers rely heavily on this data, any update on what was changed (in detail) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Chris_Saunders]

Now that POS has launched it's a lot easier to explain.

With POS there are some aspects of order creation that you can't take for granted, some of those being things like the browser ID. Those customers might have started using or playing with the POS app, which explains why that's been happening.

[development_s70]

Chris,

Thanks for your reply. Is there anyway to determine if an order has come from an online store or from customers POS system?

[Chris_Saunders]

Not reliably. I think the source might contain the pattern 'pos/*', but don't take my word on that :)

[development_s70]

Are you talking about similar headers to say like this one that defines the shop? 'x-shopify-topic' or 'x-shopify-shop-domain'

[Chris_Saunders]

No. It'll be an attribute on the order object itself.

[Jessica39]

"Not reliably. I think the source might contain the pattern 'pos/*', but don't take my word on that :)"

Is there any plan to change that so that there is a way to differentiate between an online/POS order? 

[Chris_Saunders]

Because of the work that's been done for the Point of Sale, it's kind of thrown the Orders API in a sort of flux. We don't want to roll something out that could result in several 3rd parties relying on it, especially if the API might change in the near future.

Relying on source to be pos/* is alright kinda sketchy and might also be up for changes, not entirely sure yet.

[Neil_Costford1]

We just deployed a change related to this:

You may use a new attribute belonging to both the Order and Checkout objects named "source_name". Return value will currently either be "pos" or "web". Moving forward we will be changing the way these things are represented internally, but this serialized attribute should reliably let you determine the origin of a Checkout or Order.

Hope that helps!