How can I calculate remaining trial days in a Remix app with GraphQL?

Shopify Apps

Topic summary

A developer is building a Shopify app using CLI 3.0 Remix and needs to calculate remaining trial days for subscriptions.

Current Approach:

  • Querying currentAppInstallation via GraphQL to retrieve activeSubscriptions data
  • Getting fields: trialDays, currentPeriodEnd, and createdAt
  • Attempting to calculate remaining days by finding the difference between createdAt and currentPeriodEnd

Issue:
The calculation shows 2 days between the dates, but the subscription only has 1 trial day configured, creating confusion about the correct method.

Key Finding:
The developer discovered that trial periods end based on the RecurringApplicationCharge activation time (available via REST API, not GraphQL), but cannot use this approach since they’re working with GraphQL.

Proposed Solution:
A helper function CalculateTrialStatus was shared that:

  • Calculates elapsed time since subscription creation
  • Subtracts elapsed days from total trialDays
  • Rounds to nearest whole number and ensures non-negative values
  • Returns appropriate messages (“Upgrade Now” when trial expires or remaining days count)

The discussion remains focused on finding the most accurate method for trial day calculation within the GraphQL/Remix framework constraints.

Summarized with AI on November 10. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi guys, I’m currently develop a small app for shopify using cli 3.0 remix, now and now i’m stuck at trialDays, how i can get how many days are left?
What i’m trying right now to find a solution, i don’t know if its the best solution for getting the remaining days from trial:

  1. I do a query after customer approve the app:
query {
  currentAppInstallation {
    id
    activeSubscriptions {
      id
      trialDays
      currentPeriodEnd
      createdAt
    }
  }
}
  1. And is getting the response:
"activeSubscriptions": [
        {
          "id": "gid://shopify/AppSubscription/xxxxxx",
          "trialDays": 1,
          "currentPeriodEnd": "2024-03-06T23:15:42Z",
          "createdAt": "2024-02-04T23:15:31Z"
        }
      ]
  1. Start calculate the difference between createAt and currentPeriodEnd, but its weird because i have only 1 day as a trial and on the code from above its saying 2 days from 04-02-2024 to 06-02-2024.

I did some investigation but i find only this answer which looks what i really need but i can’t used because is with Rest api and not GraphQL. “The trial ends on calculated based on the RecurringApplicationCharge’s activation time.”

It is possible to use rest api inside of remix.js?

2 
export const CalculateTrialStatus = (currentAppInstallation: any): string => {
  if (
    !currentAppInstallation ||
    !currentAppInstallation.activeSubscriptions ||
    currentAppInstallation.activeSubscriptions.length === 0
  ) {
    return "No active subscriptions";
  }

  const subscription = currentAppInstallation.activeSubscriptions[0];
  const currentPeriodEnd = new Date(subscription.currentPeriodEnd);
  const createdAt = new Date(subscription.createdAt);
  const trialDays = subscription.trialDays;

  // Calculate the remaining trial days
  const now = new Date();
  const elapsedMilliseconds = now.getTime() - createdAt.getTime();
  const elapsedDays = elapsedMilliseconds / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24);
  let remainingTrialDays = trialDays - elapsedDays;

  // Adjust remaining trial days if past the current period end
  if (now > currentPeriodEnd) {
    remainingTrialDays = 0;
  }

  // Ensure remaining trial days is not negative
  remainingTrialDays = Math.max(0, remainingTrialDays);

  // Round remaining trial days to the nearest whole number
  remainingTrialDays = Math.round(remainingTrialDays);

  // Return appropriate message based on remaining trial days
  if (remainingTrialDays === 0) {
    return "Upgrade Now";
  } else {
    return `${remainingTrialDays} days trial`;
  }
};
1 Like