Creating a Shopify plugin

This post is about Antecons, a product recommendation engine, now part of Conversio. Antecons is no longer commercially available, but I have kept my developer diary on my website with permission.


In the last post about Antecons, I wrote about frequent patterns and MapReduce. Since then, this base functionality has been tweaked to work a little better but the main focus has been on creating the first plugin for Antecons: A Shopify app.

I have previously mentioned that it is important to me that Antecons can be easy to set up. Although focusing on the API initially was a great way to get started, it has become clear after some thought that the reach is limited if the entire product is just an API from the beginning. So I have begun implementing a plugin (or an app as they call it) for Shopify. There are two reasons for choosing Shopify as the first integrated platform for Antecons:

  1. It is easy to get started with app development on Shopify and their API is quite extensive.
  2. Shopify was simply something I knew before-hand so I did not need to research other options too much.

So far, it has been a good experience working with the Shopify API. Integrating with Python/Google App Engine was very easy thanks to their open source API bindings for python.

The Shopify app for Antecons is not finished yet or at least, I do not consider it in a state where I can release it. However, it is in state where it installs correctly and delivers recommendations to the webshop it is installed on. Instead of writing a lot about that, below are some screenshots that show the functionality. The suggestions by Antecons are the little “You might also like” products.

Antecons installation start
Antecons installation start
Antecons app authentication
Antecons app authentication
Antecons installed
Antecons installed
Product page suggestion
Product page suggestion
Cart page suggestion
Cart page suggestion

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