Setup for external integration

Shopify Apps

Topic summary

  • Goal: Build an app to pull orders from a Shopify store and integrate them into a third‑party Point of Sale (POS) system.

  • Current understanding: Developer has seen in Shopify docs that an access token is required for API access.

  • Open questions: How to configure the Shopify store for this architecture and how to generate the access token.

  • Status: Beginner seeking guidance; no solutions or action items provided yet. No attachments or code shared. Discussion remains open/unresolved.

Summarized with AI on February 19. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hi,

I have been tasked to write an application that will retrieve orders from a Shopify store and then integrate those orders to a third party Point of Sale system.

The dev docs all seem to point to one thing: I need an access token.

However, what is not so clear is how do I setup the store to allow for this architecture and how do I generate the access token?

I am a complete beginner to Shopify and any help would be greatly appreciated

4

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

This will be for one store only. I will be using .Net

Besides the order retrievals, I will also be updating inventory levels on the Shopify store. I’m assuming I would just need to give the relevant permissions to this app?

6

For a one-store, one-off integration: use a Custom App

You don’t need a public app or OAuth.
Steps in Shopify Admin:

  1. Settings → Apps and sales channels → Develop apps
  2. Create an app
  3. Configure Admin API scopes:
    • For reading orders: read_orders
    • For updating inventory: usually write_inventory (and depending on your approach, sometimes also read_inventory)
  4. Install app
  5. Shopify will generate an Admin API access token → copy it and use it in your requests.

That token is what you send in the request header to the Admin API to pull orders and update inventory.

One important note - a Custom App token is store-specific and is meant for trusted server-side use (don’t put it in a client app / browser).

And check this doc for admin apps - Apps in admin

7

I finally figured it out. My store is on the latest update of Shopify Admin. The way we need to do the authentication is to first send a post request to {may-shopify-store}/admin/oauth/access_token and supply a client_id and secret. This will then generate the access token which expires in 24 hours. This is perfect for my use case.

Thank you to everyone for giving help so freely.