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Question about Webhooks

Marc40
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I'm completely new to Shopify App Programming. So, for learning I try to program some kind of simple loyalty app. The User buy something and get Points for it (which I will save on my App-Server).

When I was figuring out how to do this, I found Webhooks.

From my understanding: When my App is subscribing to a Webhook-Topic (for example "Order paid") my App gets a notification with a payload and I can calculate on my Server, how many Points the User get. (How I display the amount to the user is a problem which I will tackle later)
But the Documentation says, you should not rely on Webhooks because they can be delayed or even worse: they might not even be delivered.

That would be bad for my Use-Case. I want to show the User immediately how many Points he get (so I need an instant notification from Shopify).

Do I misunderstand Webhooks? But if I'm correct: What would be the correct approach for my Use-Case?

Accepted Solution (1)

james-langille
Shopify Staff (Retired)
70 15 27

This is an accepted solution.

Hello @Marc40! Great question. We say that webhooks are not 100% foolproof because there can always be issues in delivery over the network or the occasional outage/delay in delivering webhooks - it's a best-effort system that is generally very, very reliable. I think your use case should be fine to use webhooks, because although the rare missed webhook would be bad because a user may miss out on a few points, it wouldn't be earth-shattering relative to mission-critical use cases (i.e. something like processing actual payments, which is performed within Shopify).

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

View solution in original post

Reply 1 (1)

james-langille
Shopify Staff (Retired)
70 15 27

This is an accepted solution.

Hello @Marc40! Great question. We say that webhooks are not 100% foolproof because there can always be issues in delivery over the network or the occasional outage/delay in delivering webhooks - it's a best-effort system that is generally very, very reliable. I think your use case should be fine to use webhooks, because although the rare missed webhook would be bad because a user may miss out on a few points, it wouldn't be earth-shattering relative to mission-critical use cases (i.e. something like processing actual payments, which is performed within Shopify).

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.