Building a Jumpseller App

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A Jumpseller App can be from a simple application that injects javascript code in the online store, like a chat widget or newsletter popup, to a full fledge application that for example synchronizes online orders and inventory with an external software.

You are free for choosing whatever language or web framework you want to develop your Jumpseller App, as well as where you want to host it. Jumpseller Apps use the Jumpseller OAuth2 endpoint for authentication and the Jumpseller API to interact with the online store.

Example apps that can be developed:

Facebook Pixel javascript code used for tracking your site’s events loaded in the online store HTML
Getting products data and exporting them as a feed for Google Commerce

Register your App

Before starting, you need to register the App that you will develop in the Administration area for users to be able to authenticate on the App and for the App to access the API.

On the Administration section of your online store, you can register a new App on the Apps section. You can find the section on the left side main menu.

In the Apps section, you can see the various categories of Apps. If you want to add/develop a new app, you can do so by scrolling all the way to the bottom. And you will find the following link:

When you click on the link, a form will open up:

Let’s understand better each field:

Name - name of your new App. Example: My New App.
Author - name of the company or the person that is developing the app.
Email - Email of the author.
App URL - absolute (root) URL of your web App. Read section The root route for more information.
Redirect URL - Where a user will be redirected after the authentication, where the app will save the access token. This URL uses the callback route.
Description - description of your App. Text Limit: 145 characters.

Fill up the form with your app’s informations and click on the SAVE button.

Once you click save and go back to the Apps section, you can go to the bottom of the section and you will find your App listen there under Owned. It means they are available JUST ON YOUR STORE, i.e., no other Merchant can install it yet.

Now your App is ready for installation. Go to your app and just click on it to install your new App in your store. Once an app is installed, a Green Tick appears on the bottom right of your App. This helps to see what apps are installed on the current store.

After installing and testing your app, when you want to make it public, i.e., available for all Merchants, please contact us with the URL of the App, the Name of the Author (company/person responsible for supporting the App) and the Email of the Author.

Understanding Scopes

Scopes are required settings to specify which part of the Merchant’s store data your App would like to access. If your App wants to request products data, for instance, you must have the read_products scope, otherwise, you are not going to be able to get these data by the Jumpseller API. The scopes are also important as part of the permission process by the Merchant who’s installing your App, i.e., if the user sees that your App requests the product reading scope and he does not want to share it with anyone, he can deny the authorization for your App and give up installing and using it. So, request just the necessary scopes for your App.

Check how to Request Authorization setting the scopes.

Available Scopes	Description
read_orders, write_orders	Access to Orders
read_products, write_products	Access to Products
read_customers, write_customers	Access to Customers
read_promotions, write_promotions	Access to Promotions
read_pages, write_pages	Access to Pages
read_jsapps, write_jsapps	Access to Apps
read_settings, write_settings	Access to Settings
read_categories, write_categories	Access to Categories
read_payment_methods, write_payment_methods	Access to Payment Methods
read_shipping_methods, write_shipping_methods	Access to Shipping Methods
read_checkout_custom_fields, write_checkout_custom_fields	Access to Checkout Custom Fields
read_countries, write_countries	Access to Countries
read_custom_fields, write_custom_fields	Access to Custom Fields
read_customer_categories, write_customer_categories	Access to Customer Categories
read_hooks, write_hooks	Access to Hooks
read_store, write_store	Access to Store
read_fulfillments, write_fulfillments	Access to Fulfillments

Authentication

The first step was to register your new App in the store administration area but for now is just an eggshell because the web App does not exist yet. Keep reading this article to understand the basic concepts that will allow you to build your first Jumpseller App.

Basic Concepts

The first important concept to understand is about OAuth 2. When you registered your new App in Jumpseller Admin on the previous part for this article, in fact you were creating a new OAuth 2 application. That means your App needs to run throughout the Authorization Flow of OAuth 2.

Go to the OAuth 2 page to better understand how it works.

The OAuth 2 Credentials

In your Jumpseller Admin, go to the Apps section, scroll to the Owned apps section.

Click on the Settings Icon on your App and click Edit:

You will be redirected to the edit page. Here, you can see all informations you have inserted when you registered your App as well as two new fields: APP ID and APP SECRET.

Copy and save your App’s id and secret anywhere. You are going to need it later for the OAuth 2 flow.

DO NOT share your app’s client id and client secret with anyone.

Mandatory Routes

When developing your Jumpseller App, you are free to decide what kind of application you are going to build and which routes it will have.

But to work with Jumpseller is very important to have two of them: The root route and the callback route.

Let’s get to know them better!

The Root route

The Route route is the entrance point of the App, is the controller that will render the page that will open, within an iframe, when the user opens the App in the Jumpseller store Admin Panel

Every Jumpseller App requires some input from the Merchant, i.e., before the user is being able to use it. The page rendered by this route will require the inputs needed for the initial App setup.

Our Olark App is a good example of it. In order to have the Olark’s online chat in your store, you should signup in theirs website, copy and past your Olark ID on the App form and save it.

So your root route is responsible for presenting this kind of required settings input page for the Merchant.

Make sure your App uses an SSL certificate. Non-HTTPs URLs cannot be loaded.

The Callback route

As you already know, the Jumpseller Apps use the Authorization Flow of OAuth 2. A redirect from the Jumpseller OAuth 2 service to your callback route is part of this flow.

The callback route is where you are going to be able to get your access token from the OAuth 2 service and use it to read and write to the online store API.

Visit the OAuth 2 page to better understand about the callback route and visit the API page for learning how to use the OAuth 2’s access token when you want to access the online store API.

Tutorial: creating a simple Jumpseller app

As mentioned before, you are free to choose which programming languages or web framework you want to use to build your App.

For now, let’s just create a really simple basic example to help you reinforce what was learned so far.

If you use Ruby, this Sinatra’s App Skeleton is available for you to use.

Getting started

In your terminal, create a new directory wherever you want and cd it:

> mkdir my-new-app
> cd my-new-app

After, create a simple index.html file with a Hello, World! text:

> echo 'Hello, World!' > index.html

Now you can run a really simple web application with the Python SimpleHTTPServer class:

> python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

You should have python installed on your computer

This example uses the port 8000 but you can change it if you want.

Open your favorite browser and visit the address http://localhost:8000. This simple web server is already running and you can see the Hello, World! message on your browser:

Testing your Jumpseller App

You have your web server up and running in your local machine. Now it is time for testing it!

As you remember, when you registered your App in the Jumpseller Admin, you had to inform a callback and an application URL.

Follow the same steps for editing your App as you did in OAuth 2 Credentials and change your application URL to http://localhost:8000:

Save it, go to the Installed tab, find your App and click on it.

You’ll realize that you still can’t see anything. That is because Jumpseller Admin can’t access the web server in your local machine, at least not yet, while you use the localhost.

Let’s fix that!

Tunneling your Web Application

A simple solution for making your local web application publicly available is tunneling it. There are lots of solutions for tunneling, but we will use ngrok in this tutorial.

First, let’s install it. Open a new terminal tab or window and:

> brew install ngrok

Brew works only for Mac but there are lots of options to install ngrok according your OS: downloading it, brew, npm, apt-get, etc.

Once you have it installed, let’s execute it:

> ngrok http 8000

As you can see above, ngrok creates for you a public URL and manages the tunneling for your local web server, i.e., every request this public URL receives, ngrok handles the request to make it reach your local web server.

Access this public URL on your browser and you will see the same as in http://localhost:8000, the Hello, World! message.

Updating again your App URL

Now you can edit again your App in Jumpseller Admin and change the Application URL field to:

Save it and try to access your App again clicking on it within the Installed tab on the Apps section. The Hello, World! message is visible, i.e., the Jumpseller App was able to load your local web application inside its iframe.

Next steps

Congratulations! Your Jumpseller App is installed and loading your web application. Once your have it done, you can deploy it for any production hosting and change the Application URL (and Callback URL) to your production URL.

You can now improve your Jumpseller App with the Jumpseller API but for this you need to understand the authorization flow of OAuth 2 and how to get your access token for API requests.

Approval

Before your app can be made public, our team needs to test it. Please follow these steps:

Email marketing@jumpseller.com to confirm the App is ready for testing.
Send Jumpseller test account/credentials.
Provide a “how-to documentation” so we can follow the optimal steps while testing the app, a video with a voiceover will also make do.

Publishing

In order to get the app published, make sure you have submitted the following assets to marketing@jumpseller.com:

A Logo in “jpg” with dimensions: 600×150.
A brief description of the app (80 words or less).
A single document (Google Docs, PDF etc.) with an installation guide that includes the following information:
- How to register (if required)
- How to install and use a Jumpseller store
- FAQ’s (if applicable)
- A support email for Jumpseller customers to reach out
Add at least 4 screenshots showing the app interface and use case.
Create a video to be published on the Jumpseller profile page.