Shopify Reliability Patterns

Shopify retries webhooks up to 19 times over 48 hours if your endpoint doesn't return 200. Your handler must be idempotent. Use Redis to track X-Shopify-Webhook-Id with a 7-day TTL. Always respond 200 within 5 seconds, then process asynchronously.

See Webhook Idempotency for the complete implementation.

Step 3: Graceful Degradation with Cached Fallback

Implement a three-tier fallback: try the live API first (caching the result), fall back to cached data, then fall back to an alternative data source (e.g., local DB). Track the data source so you can log degraded responses.

See Cached Fallback for the complete implementation.

Step 4: Webhook Processing Queue

Don't process webhooks inline — queue them with BullMQ for resilience. Verify HMAC first, respond 200 immediately, then enqueue with topic/shop/payload metadata. The worker processes jobs with exponential backoff (5 retries) and idempotency checks.

See Webhook Processing Queue for the complete implementation.

Step 5: Rate Limit-Aware Retry

Retry logic that respects Shopify's Retry-After header (REST 429) and GraphQL throttle status restore rate. Calculates optimal wait time from available points rather than blindly backing off.

See Rate Limit-Aware Retry for the complete implementation.

Output

• Circuit breaker preventing cascade failures during Shopify outages
• Idempotent webhook processing preventing duplicate operations
• Graceful degradation with cached fallback data
• Queue-based webhook processing for resilience
• Rate limit-aware retry logic

Error Handling

Examples

Health Check with Circuit State

app.get("/health", async (req, res) => {
  res.json({
    status: shopifyCircuit.opened ? "degraded" : "healthy",
    shopify: {
      circuit: shopifyCircuit.opened ? "open" : "closed",
      stats: shopifyCircuit.stats,
    },
    webhookQueue: {
      waiting: await webhookQueue.getWaitingCount(),
      active: await webhookQueue.getActiveCount(),
      failed: await webhookQueue.getFailedCount(),
    },
  });
});

Resources

• Circuit Breaker Pattern
• Opossum Circuit Breaker
• BullMQ Documentation
• Shopify Webhook Retry Policy