Private App has high QPS... how do I circumvent Shopify's rate limit?

[okair]

Hi all,

So my private app needs to call the shopify API at a pretty high QPS, at a rate that exceeds their rate limits. My thought here is to create my own GraphQL server for my private app to access, and that server would call Shopify's API say once an hour to get the most updated product/customer information to then server to the private app. Any other ideas on how to do this? 

Appreciate ANY feedback!! thank you 🙏🏻

[Jason]

If there's no need to smash the Shopify servers and it's something you can do on your own systems that makes sense to me. Higher rates are available on Plus plans but let's skip that conversation for now.

• What kind of rates are you needing? Just to give me a sense of the issue.
• What does the app/middleware do?
• If you're calling Shopify every hour why does it matter if the calls you make direct to Shopify take a moment to process? 

[okair]

Hi @Jason thanks for the quick response. A few clarifications: 

What I'm proposing looks something like this:

Private App ---> Own Private GraphQL Server ----> Shopify API

Private graphql server would call Shopify API say once an hour to refresh the data. Private App can then call the Private Server as much as it wants. 

- We should be able to handle up to 10QPS (MAX load) for queries that cost around 400 points. 

- It's kind of complicated, but it's an external site that pulls information from the Shopify API... 

- I was saying my own personal GraphQL server would call the Shopify API once an hour to make sure the data is the most up-to-date to serve to the private app. It doesn't matter if takes a moment to process. 

[Jason]

The what is does is lacking still but get why you wouldn't go into that on a public forum. How you are approaching feels like the right path to me.

The only things to just keep in mind:

1. Be sure that the Shopify rates don't meet your needs. Sounds like you have but would hate to see you develop something more complex if just hitting the servers slower did the job.
2. Look at using webhooks or recent customer data to keep your database up to date. You likely are already but doubt you'd need to pull the whole customer list each time.
3. Remember that merchants on Plus plans get more rates so  plan type could alter your approach because of it.