Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Laravel Shopify course, where you will learn how to build a Shopify app with Laravel. If you're not familiar with Shopify, it's a leading e-commerce platform that makes it easy for businesses to set up an online store and sell their products. Before we jump into the Shopify overview and their APIs, let's talk a little bit about the prerequisites of this course. This course is introductory course meant to get you started with Shopify app development using Laravel. So that means you need to know Laravel, at least at the basic level. I know that sounds very general because there are a lot of things that come with Laravel,

So that means you need to know Laravel, at least at the basic level. I know that sounds very general because there are a lot of things that come with Laravel, but the prerequisite here is just good old plain vanilla Laravel with sprinkles of Vite and JavaScript. If you're new to Laravel, I would recommend checking out Laravel from scratch series here at Laracasts, which should be good enough to get you started. Now, as far as the JavaScript goes, we'll be using React.js mostly to build the UI part of the app. But you can use Vue.js if you prefer, or even Blade. All right.

But you can use Vue.js if you prefer, or even Blade. All right. So what is an app? A Shopify app is just a piece of software that extends the existing functionality of Shopify. You can think of it as a plugin or a module that you can build using Laravel. As an example, your app then connects to Shopify via various APIs, depending on what part of the Shopify store you want to extend or provide additional features for. Finally, once your app is ready, Merchant installs your app in their store to add the functionality that your app provides.

Finally, once your app is ready, Merchant installs your app in their store to add the functionality there your app provides. And Merchant here is basically the store owner. There are essentially two types of apps, public apps and private or custom apps. Public apps are available within the Shopify App Store and need to be reviewed and approved by Shopify. Shopify has a huge app marketplace and most of the apps there are not even built by Shopify. They are built by third party developers or companies. As you can see here, there are a lot of apps that Shopify has. There are apps related to marketing, social media, store management, design, shipping.

As you can see here, there are a lot of apps that Shopify has. There are apps related to marketing, social media, store management, design, shipping and so on. Some of them are free, some of them are freemium and some of them are subscription based apps. You can build very simple apps or you can build very complicated apps depending on what part of Shopify you want to extend and provide features for. Now if you have a client or a merchant who has specific needs, you can build a private or a custom app just for them to use. Such apps don't go into the App Store and don't need to be reviewed by Shopify. The apps are typically embedded within the Shopify admin.

Such apps don't go into the App Store and don't need to be reviewed by Shopify. The apps are typically embedded within the Shopify admin. For example, if I click on the Pinterest app right here and go through the screenshots, you can see that their app is embedded within the Shopify store. So it's embedded within the Shopify's UI using the same or similar Shopify UI elements. Let's open another one here as an example, maybe SQGen. Let's open the screenshot and yeah, it's the same thing. This also is an embedded app as you can see here. It's embedded within the Shopify store's UI. The top section that you see here is basically the Shopify store management.

It's embedded within the Shopify store's UI. The top section that you see here is basically the Shopify store management. You can manage products, orders, customers, theme that your store uses and so on. Then on the bottom section, we see the SQGen app that is installed on the store and the UI is embedded within the Shopify. In addition to embedded apps, you can also build non-embedded apps where merchant is taken to your website, for example. But it seems that Shopify prefers embedded apps because the merchant doesn't have to leave the Shopify admin panel and can interact with your app straight from there. This makes it easier for merchants to manage their store as well as their apps and it overall

leave the Shopify admin panel and can interact with your app straight from there. This makes it easier for merchants to manage their store as well as their apps and it overall provides a better user experience. All right, so let's head over to the documentation and note that it is very easy to get overwhelmed and go down many rabbit holes when browsing through the Shopify documentation. There are multiple APIs, multiple ways of doing things, different libraries exist, different API formats and so on. So that's why I decided to pick a very simple app to build for this course to not get sidetracked and overwhelmed. The app that we'll be building in this course is an embedded app and it will help the

sidetracked and overwhelmed. The app that we'll be building in this course is an embedded app and it will help the user generate fake data, basically generate fake products for a store. This can be useful for testing purposes or when demoing a new store to a client. You don't want to create a bunch of products manually or prepare files to import them and so on. Instead, we'll make it easy by having a button and a few options to create some fake or dummy products. I think that this will be simple enough to not get overwhelmed, but also challenging enough to provide a valuable learning experience. Overall, I think it should give you a great foundation for further app development.

enough to provide a valuable learning experience. Overall, I think it should give you a great foundation for further app development. As far as the APIs go, as I mentioned, Shopify has many APIs. The two most common ones are the Admin API and the Storefront. Most of Shopify's APIs are in GraphQL format, but the Admin API offers REST API format as well. We will be using REST Admin API in this course and touch only the parts that we need to build our app. So let's get started on this project and set up our development store in the next episode.

So let's get started on this project and set up our development store in the next episode.