Shopify Developer Training Plan

A thorough Checklist of Shopify concepts every developer should know in the order they should learn them

Contents

• Theme Development
• App Development

Theme Development

Basics

1. Know how to create a development environment. 1

2. Understand the limitations of a development store including the use of the Bogus Payment Gateway. 2

3. Know how to utilize ThemeKit to sync your local development theme with the Shopify sandbox store. 3,4

Resources

1. Creating development stores
2. Bogus Payment Gateway
3. Themekit
4. 3 Simple Steps for Setting Up a Local Shopify Theme Development Environment

Products

1. Know about Product Variants. 1, 4

2. Know about the 100 Variant limit and 3 option limit. 2

3. Know what options exist to accomidate the 100 variant limit. 3

Resources

1. Product Variants
2. Variant limitations
3. Getting Around the Shopify Product Variant Limit
4. How to Add Variants to Products (Video)

Liquid basics

1. Understand the basics of liquid including tags and filters. 1

2. Know Shopify's specific objects, tags, and filters. 2, 3

3. Know of the Shopify liquid cheatsheet. 4

4. Know of the Snippets Library. 5

Resources

1. Liquid Introduction
2. Shopify's Liquid introduction
3. Shopify Liquid The Ultimate Guide
4. Shopify Liquid Cheatsheet
5. Snippets Library

Route object

1. Know the routes object why it's important for multi-lingual stores. [1]

Resources

1. Routes Object

Translations

1. Know how to leverage translations keys and the | t liquid filter for Shopify translations. 1

2. Know how to avoid escaping html through the use of _html translation keys. 2

3. Know where in the Shopify admin a merchant can directly make translation updates. 3

4. Understand how multi-lingual translations operate. 4

5. Understand how to develop themes to support multi-lingual stores. 5

Resources

1. Translation keys and the t filter
2. Including HTML in translation keys
3. Translating your store
4. Multilingual Stores
5. Developing themes that support multiple languages

Alternate Templates

1. Understand how to create and leverage alternative templates. 1

Resources

1. Create alternate templates

Metafields

1. Know what a metafield is. 1

2. Know what the metafield object is. 2

3. Know how to show metafields in the theme. 3,4

4. Understand when and how to use private metafields. 5

Resources

1. Metafields
2. Metafield object
3. Show Metafields in the storefront
4. Using Metafields in your Shopify theme
5. Private metafields

Tags

1. Understand creating and using tags. 1

2. Understand the valid formats of a tag. 2

3. Understand the limitations of a tag. Such as a maximum of 250 tags per product.

4. Know how to leverage product tags for collection filtering and the limitations. 3

Resources

1. Creating and using Tags
2. Tag formats
3. Filter collections with product tags

Metafields vs Tags

1. Understand when to use a Shopify Tag vs a Metafield. 1

Resources

1. Tags vs Metafields in Shopify and Shopify Plus

Line Item Property

1. Understand what a line item property is. 1

2. Understand how to surface line item properties as custom inputs in a theme. 2

3. Know how to hide line item properties from the customer in checkout using the _ prefix. 3

Resources

1. Line Item Property Object
2. Line Item Property Input Generator
3. Hide Line Item Properties

Shopify Scripts

1. Understand the basics of Ruby. 1
2. Understand what Shopify scripts are and how to use them. 2, 3
3. Know the Shopify Scripts API. 4
4. Know the limitations of Script such as not being able to add products and lack of API. 5
5. Know about the unofficial Shopify Scripts generator. 6

Resources

1. Learn Ruby Fundamentals
2. Shopify Scripts & Script Editor
3. Shopify Scripts Examples
4. Scripts API
5. Limitations of Scripts
6. Scripts Generator

App Development

App types

1. Know the differences between different types of apps (Private vs Unlisted vs Public). 1

API versioning & rate limiting

1. Understand Shopify's API Versioning scheme and quarterly release/deprecation cycle. 1
2. Understand how Shopify rate limits the REST and Graphql Admin APIS. 1
3. Know that Shopify Plus stores have double the rate limits. 1
4. Know that the popular Shopify-api-node library respects rate limiting and allows for configuration. 1

Security best practices

1. Know how to rotate credentials and why it's important. 1
2. Know that access tokens should be encrypted at rest.
3. Know that all API requests should be verified via session before taking actions on behalf of a user.
4. Know that all user input should be cleaned and verified before saving to DB.

Useful packages

1. Shopify API Node - #1 package to connect to Shopify's REST API via NodeJS.
2. Shopify Quilt - Collection of official Shopify Javascript packages.
3. Admin-graphql-api-utilities - Super useful package when interacting with the Storefront and Admin Graphql libraries.
4. Polaris React - Shopify's official component library to create apps consistent with Shopify's UI/UX.
5. App-bridge-react - Shopify's library for creating embedded apps that interact with Shopify such as showing modals, alerts, etc.

Miscellaneous

1. Know about the developer changelog which is where Shopify announces developer facing changes and features. 1

Resources

1. Developer Changelog