Create custom laravel logs

Trust is good - but logs are better

There are many ways to identify what is going on under the hood of your laravel application. If you want to watch your code step by step then I would highly recommend a debugger for PHP like Xdebug along with the XDebug plugin for VS Code.

You could also use laravel's dd() - or of course also use the good ol' PHP way with var_dump() & print_r() - function which will stop your application and print out any given variable that you passed to the dd() function.

The third option would be logging. Logs can really come in handy for example when your app is retrieving data from external APIs. Sometimes you have to keep track of all of the data that is coming in. Sometimes your app might not work the way you expected it to work and a quick look at the logs might give you a hint to the root of the problem.

In laravel you can create a log entry very easily. Just use any of the methods below anywhere in your code.

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;
 
Log::emergency($message);
Log::alert($message);
Log::critical($message);
Log::error($message);
Log::warning($message);
Log::notice($message);
Log::info($message);
Log::debug($message);

And just like that you can create a log entry withing your storage/logs/laravel.log file. The laravel.log file is set as the default channel for your logs. Your log file can become convoluted very quickly if you write all of your logs only to one file. That's why you want to create multiple custom log files within your application and seperate them thematically. For example you might want to have an error.log and another log for all your requests to the shopify api and so on and so on.

Understanding laravel logging file

If you take a look at the default settings of the config/logging.php file, you can see the default channel. If you haven't set any other values within your .env file then laravel's default channel is the "stack"-channel. Scrolling down the logging.php file you can see an array of channels that are defined within your app. The first item of this array is - your default channel - the stack-channel and it looks something like this:

'stack' => [
    'driver' => 'stack',
    'channels' => ['single'],
    'ignore_exceptions' => false,
],

So the channel name is obviously stack. The driver name is stack too, but what does that mean?

Well laravel has many drivers to choose from, but in this article we're just concentrating on stack and single. When you choose the stack driver, then you can write your log messages to multiple files, or better said multiple channels. You can define which channels to write your logs to in the 'channels' property, which expects an array of channels as a value. By default the only channel that is used here is the 'single' channel.

So let's take a look at the 'single' channel:

'single' => [
    'driver' => 'single',
    'path' => storage_path('logs/laravel.log'),
    'level' => env('LOG_LEVEL', 'debug'),
],

Here we can see that this channel uses the 'single' driver. This tells us that the log message will only be written to one file. Which file? You might ask. Well, that is defined within the 'path' property of the 'single' channel array. And in there we can see, that the logs are written to the laravel.log file - as expected. The level tells us which Log message are actually being written to the log files based on the log level. laravel provides all log levels that are defined in the RFC 5424 specification. That means if you specify a log level of warning within your channel, then the following message wouldn't be printed:

Log::info($message);

because it is a level below warning!

Creating own log channel

So with all this knowledge we can now finally create our own Log channel! In order to do this, we will have to navigate back to our config/logging.php file and add an item to our 'channels' array. In my case it looks something like this:

'channels' => [

    ...,

    'shopify' => [
        'driver' => 'single',
        'path' => storage_path('logs/shopify_API.log'),
    ],

],

As you can see I created a new channel that writes a log file to storage/logs/shopify_API.log. In order to call this channel from anywhere in my application all I have to do is to call the following method:

Log::channel('shopify')->info('API info message', ['user_id' => 1]);

Customizing log message

Now let's step things up a notch and customize our logging message:

In order to do that we will have to create a new class within our app. So let's add a 'Logging' directory within our app directory wehre we add a new php file called CustomizedFormatter.php. The file should look something like this:

<?php

namespace App\Logging;

use Monolog\Formatter\LineFormatter;

class CustomizeFormatter
{
    public function __invoke($logger)
    {
        foreach ($logger->getHandlers() as $handler) {
            $handler->setFormatter(new LineFormatter(
                '{%datetime%} %message% // %context%'
            ));
        }
    }
}

As you can see, we define our desired format within the new LineFormatter class. Of course you can choose whatever format you like, I just made up an example.

In our last step we just have to tell our channel to use that custom formatter. That is easily done by going back to your logging.php file. Now we have to add the 'tap' property to our channel, in there we have to define an array. Within that array we pass our newly created CustomizeFormatter class. The channel should look like this:

use App\Logging\CustomizeFormatter;

...

'shopify' => [
    'tap' => [CustomizeFormatter::class],
    'driver' => 'single',
    'path' => storage_path('logs/shopify_API.log'),
],

And just like that you have created a custom log for your laravel application!

shopify invalid session token

Invalid session token - solve the annoying shopify error

If you have been working with shopify apps then you might have come across an error that says that you have an invalid session token. The reason behind this error might come from a race condition. The client tries to get some information from the server before it received a valid session token. Usually the client should have a session token, when making requests but you cannot be a 100% sure all of the time, thus the error is presented.

If you are making requests with axios then your request might look something like this:

// WRONG AND WIll LEAD TO ERROR DUE TO RACE CONDITIONS!!
axios
.get("https://test-application.test/api/endpoint")
.then(
    (response: {
        data: {
            content: string;
        };
    }) => {
            console.log("data:", data);
        );
    }
)
.catch((error) => {
    console.log("ERROR:", error);
});

In order to make sure that there won't be a race condition you can intercept your client's call and add some properties to the headers. All of this can be done very easily with axios. We want to make sure that the session token is always sent to the server, and in order to create a session token you will have to install an npm package from shopify.

You will need some methods from the shopify app-bridge-utils so make sure to install the npm package @shopify/app-bridge-utils:

npm i @shopify/app-bridge-utils
const instance = axios.create();
// Intercept all requests on this axios instance

instance.interceptors.request.use(function (config) {
return getSessionToken(app).then((token) => {
    config.headers["Authorization"] = `Bearer ${token}`;
        return config;
    });
});

instance
.get('https://test-application.test/api/endpoint')
.then(
    (response: {
        data: {
            themeName: string;
            appBlocksEnabled: string;
        };
    }) => {
        console.log("data:", data);
        setThemeName({ name: response.data.themeName });
        setContentLoaded(true);
        setSupportsAppBlocks(
            response.data.appBlocksEnabled === "partly" ||
                "completely"
                ? true
                : false
        );
    }
)
.catch((error) => {
    console.log("ERROR:", error);
});

And now your invalid session token error shouldn't appear anymore.

You can also watch my video right here:

Shopify Script tags conditional dispatching

Shopify 2.0 themes now offer the use of app blocks. If a theme is using app blocks, then your app shouldn't dispatch any script tags. Now if you're an laravel app developer you're probably using this laravel package from osiset.

Unfortunately this package does not yet provide the possibility to ask if app blocks are available or not. If you're using the package then script tags will always be dispatched. If you want need to load the script tags conditional, then you will have to do a little editing.

All of the code that I will show you here will work with the package at version 17.1. So you should make sure to upgrade your laravel package.

all credits of this code go to https://github.com/apurbajnu as he coded it you can also read along this GitHub Issue: https://github.com/osiset/laravel-shopify/issues/980#issuecomment-991649153. I just made some slide changes to make the code work with version 17.1

Also make sure to give your app the correct access scopes. In order to check for app blocks, you need to give your app the 'read_themes' scope!

  1. Go to the env file and add this line depending on whatever template you need.

2. Go to config/shopify-app.php and add this line.

3. Go to vendor/osiset/laravel-shopify/src/Contracts/ApiHelper.php and add these lines.

4. Go to vendor/osiset/laravel-shopify/src/Services/ApiHelper.php and add these lines. (carbon.now.sh won't let me copy such long lines of code, that's why this code looks a little ugly)

    public function getThemes(array $params = []): ResponseAccess
    {
        // Setup the params
        $reqParams = array_merge(
            [
                'limit' => 250,
                'fields' => 'id,role',
            ],
            $params
        );

        // Fire the request
        $response = $this->doRequest(
            ApiMethod::GET(),
            '/admin/themes.json',
            $reqParams
        );

        return $response['body']['themes'];
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */


    public function getThemes(array $params = []): ResponseAccess
    {
        // Setup the params
        $reqParams = array_merge(
            [
                'limit' => 250,
                'fields' => 'id,role',
            ],
            $params
        );

        // Fire the request
        $response = $this->doRequest(
            ApiMethod::GET(),
            '/admin/themes.json',
            $reqParams
        );

        return $response['body']['themes'];
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */


    public function scriptTagShouldBeEnabled(array $app_block_templates = [], array $params = []): bool
    {

        if (count($app_block_templates) > 0) {

            $themes = $this->getThemes();
            $published_theme = null;
            $templateJSONFiles = [];
            $sectionsWithAppBlock = [];
            $main = false;
            $templateMainSections = [];
            if (count($themes) !== 0) {
                foreach ($themes as $theme) {
                    if ($theme['role'] === 'main') {
                        $published_theme = $theme['id'];
                    }
                }
            }

            if (!is_null($published_theme)) {
                // Setup the params
                $reqParams = array_merge(
                    [
                        'fields' => 'key',
                    ],
                    $params
                );

                // Fire the request
                $response = $this->doRequest(
                    ApiMethod::GET(),
                    "/admin/themes/{$published_theme}/assets.json",
                    $reqParams
                );


                $assets = $response['body']['assets'];

                if (count($assets) > 0) {
                    foreach ($assets as $asset) {

                        foreach ($app_block_templates as $template) {

                            $trimmedTemplate = trim($template);

                            if ($asset['key'] === "templates/{$trimmedTemplate}.json") {

                                $templateJSONFiles[] = $asset['key'];
                            }
                        }
                    }

                    if (count($templateJSONFiles) == count($app_block_templates)) {
                        foreach ($templateJSONFiles as $file) {
                            $acceptsAppBlock = false;
                            $reqParams = array_merge(
                                [
                                    'fields' => 'value',
                                ],
                                ['asset[key]' => $file]
                            );

                            // Fire the request
                            $response = $this->doRequest(
                                ApiMethod::GET(),
                                "/admin/themes/{$published_theme}/assets.json",
                                $reqParams
                            );

                            $asset = $response['body']['asset'];

                            $json = json_decode($asset['value'], true);
                            $query = 'main-';

                            if (array_key_exists('sections', (array)$json) && count($json['sections']) > 0) {
                                foreach ($json['sections'] as $key => $value) {
                                    if ($key === 'main' || substr($value['type'], 0, strlen($query)) === $query) {
                                        $main = $value;
                                        break;
                                    }
                                }
                            }

                            if ($main) {
                                $mainType = $main['type'];
                                if (count($assets) > 0) {
                                    foreach ($assets as $asset) {
                                        if ($asset['key'] === "sections/{$mainType}.liquid") {
                                            $templateMainSections[] = $asset['key'];
                                        }
                                    }
                                }
                            }
                        }

                        if (count($templateMainSections) > 0) {
                            $templateMainSections = array_unique($templateMainSections);
                            foreach ($templateMainSections as $templateSection) {
                                $acceptsAppBlock = false;
                                $reqParams = array_merge(
                                    [
                                        'fields' => 'value',
                                    ],
                                    ['asset[key]' => $templateSection]
                                );

                                // Fire the request
                                $response = $this->doRequest(
                                    ApiMethod::GET(),
                                    "/admin/themes/{$published_theme}/assets.json",
                                    $reqParams
                                );
                                $asset = $response['body']['asset'];

                                $match = preg_match('/\{\%\s+schema\s+\%\}([\s\S]*?)\{\%\s+endschema\s+\%\}/m', $asset['value'], $matches);

                                $schema = json_decode($matches[1], true);

                                if ($schema && array_key_exists('blocks', $schema)) {
                                    foreach ($schema['blocks'] as $block) {
                                        if (array_key_exists('type', (array)$block) && $block['type'] === '@app') {
                                            $acceptsAppBlock = true;
                                        }
                                    }
                                    //   $acceptsAppBlock = .some((b => b.type === '@app'));
                                }
                                $acceptsAppBlock ? array_push($sectionsWithAppBlock, $templateSection) : null;
                            }
                        }
                    }



                    if (count($sectionsWithAppBlock) > 0  && count($sectionsWithAppBlock) === count($templateJSONFiles)) {
                        return false;
                    }

                    if (count($sectionsWithAppBlock) > 0) {
                        return false;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        return true;
    }

6. Go To vendor/osiset/laravel-shopify/src/Actions/DispatchScripts.php and add these lines

so the __invoke Method at DispatchScripts.php should look something like this:

Now you need just need to make sure to override those classes in your project. Otherwise all your code will be overriden the next you update the package!

I hope this could help you a little bit when you build your shopify app!

How to create a shopify app in 2022

How to create a shopify app in 2022

Shopify made in incredibly easy for you to create a shopify app in 2022. All you have to do is update your shopify cli and run the latest version. You can checkout you shopify CLI version by typing in shopify version in your terminal. If you run version 2.7.3 or higher then you can be sure that the shopify app CLI is available to you.

Now cd into the directory where you want to install your app. Now just type in

this will create a new laravel project. Shopify also provides the ability to create a node.js project or a ruby project right from the CLI!

You might think that you can instantly open your app by typing in shopify app open. But unfortunately that won't work yet. Some configuration is still necessary.

First you have to make sure that your ngrok connection is authenticated. So you will have to create an account and open your dashboard at ngrok. In there you can navigate to your Auth token and copy that value.

Now go back to your terminal and type in

Now your ngrok connection is authenticated. Your shopify application needs ngrok to connect to your shop. Now you can start your app by typing in

This command will automatically start a new tunnel via ngrok and start a local development server.

The CLI will ask you if you want to update your application url. If you have no other reason why you shouldn't update your app url, then click yes.

This step is important, because every time you restart your application you will get a new ngrok-url. This means your local application is now reachable under a new url. That's why you would have to update your app url in your partners dashboard again. But the shopify CLI will do that for you automatically.

Your terminal should now look something like this:

If you press command or ctrl and click on the link in the console then you will be taken to installation window of shopify. That page will look something like this:

If you click on install unlisted app then you should see something like this:

Congrats! You just created a shopify app in a matter of minutes.

How to deploy a Laravel app to Heroku in 10 steps

You’ve made it! You successfully created your shopify app. Now it’s time to deploy it! I want to write a step by step guide about laravel app deployment. We will deploy an app to heroku which is completely free.

there are some prerequisits for you to follow along:

If you have all that set up, then let’s go!

If you don't feel like reading, you can watch all the steps in my video right here:

1. Create a Procfile

Cd into your project root and create a Procfile by typing: touch Procfile
After creating the Procfile add the following lines

The Procfile is a configuration file for Heroku. It helps to specify the commands that are executed by the app on startup.

For example, you can put your app’s web server or worker processes, etc.
For example in my video on how to create scripttags (How to create Scripttags - Shopify App Development for #PHP Developers | L4Webdesign ), I showed you that you need to type php artisan queue:listen to create the scripttags upon installation.

If you take a look at the Procfile, you can see that we are referencing a nginx_app.conf file. We also have to create that and set it up

2. Setting up nginx config file

type touch nginx_app.conf to create the config file. Then paste in these settings:

3. Login to Heroku

To log into Heroku, type heroku login. Your browser will open and you will be redirected to a login page where you can enter your credentials. If everything worked then you’re logged in and you can now use the heroku CLI.

4. Create heroku application

Let’s switch back to our terminal so we can use the heroku-cli. As a side note: we are still at the root of our project.
type heroku create name-of-app. If you don’t put a name for the app, Heroku will create a random name and URL for it.
It should look something like this:

L4-Webdesign-heroku-cli

Now if you go to your dashboard on heroku you can see that your app was created succesully.

If you type in git remote -v then you will see, that heroku has already created a git repo for you.

L4-Webdesign-heroku-cli

Now any time you will push to that repo, heroku will trigger a new deployment.
In this guide we will push to herokus repo directly, but it is also possibe to connect your github account with heroku. That way you can always push to your github repo and it will trigger a deployment as well.

5. Push your code to Heroku

Push your code from the command line just like you would push it to github, but instead of the remote origin, push your changes to the remote heroku branch:

notice the flag --allow-empty This might come in handy at some time, when you want to trigger a deployment, but you haven’t made any changes to your code.

6. Checkout and debug deployed app

Your app should be deployed now, so let’s check it out! go to https://l4-shopify-app.herokuapp.com/ and take a look!
You should now see something like this:

L4-Webdesign-heroku-deployed-app

This is good and bad at the same time. It’s good because the deployment worked but it’s bad because the app is not running yet. In order to see what causes our error, we can add APP_DEBUG=true to our .env file.

Important: when you copy all of your .env files, make sure that you update your APP_URL. Also make sure that you enter the correct values for SHOPIFY_API_KEY and SHOPIFY_API_SECRET. Otherwise the hmac will not be calculated correctly and you will see an error.

There are two ways to set up your .env file. Either on your heroku dashboard, or right on your CLI:

  • Edit .env on heroku Dashboard:
    From your dashboard, navigate to Settings and click Reveal Config Vars.
    Now you can set up all your environment variables.
L4-Webdesign-heroku-config-vars
  • Edit .env on CLI
    If you prefer the CLI you can use the command heroku config:add ENV_CONFIG=value So in this example I could have typed in

    heroku config:add APP_DEBUG=true

    This will give you the same results.
    If you want to add a little vim magic, you could add the command heroku config:add to the beginning of every line (checkout How to insert text at beginning of a multi-line selection in vi/Vim ) and you would have a script to add all of your environment variables.

7. Create Database

If we refresh our app on heroku we will see the following error page:

L4-Webdesign-heroku-error

It says that the connection was refused. That happened because we haven’t set up a database yet. So let’s do this right now.

If you go to Resources you can search for resources for your app. Here you can search for your database. You can chose any database you want, like MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB. I would recommend to use Heroku Postgres since they provide best offer. Here you can use up to 1GB of storage which I haven’t seen on any of the other databases.

L4-Webdesign-heroku-config-vars

Add this add-on and you will see, that postgres is now attached as your database.

L4-Webdesign-heroku-dashboard

8. Database credentials

In order to set up our database we need setup our database credentials. We will get all of the required properties by typing heroku pg:credentials:url in the command line.

We can now copy and paste all of the credentials to our environment variables. Remember how we did it in step 6a) or 6b) ?

Remember to add DB_CONNECTION=pgsql to your environment variables, since this was not on the output of our terminal.

9. Migrate and seed database

Now it’s time to migrate our database. If you have created a billable app (checkout this video I made: How to set up billing for Shopify apps (as a Laravel developer)) then you will need a database seeder to set up your billing table.

You now have two options to create your migration:

  1. run heroku run php artisan migrate --seed
  2. run heroku run bash -a app-name
    Now you have access to the bash of your app. from there you can now run php artisan migrate --seed as well.

10. Create a public app at shopify dashboard

Set up a public app in shopify. If you don’t know how that is done, then you can watch my video here or read my article.

Don't forget to setup all of the environment variables in your heroku app.

11. You’re done 🎉

Congrats! You deployed your app to heroku!

You should now see your embedded shopify app if you install your app in a development store

How to create a Shopify App with laravel

In this tutorial I want to show you how you can create a shopify app with laravel.

You can either watch the video I recorded

Or you can read the step by step guide and copy all commands right here:

Installation Laravel App

  1. Create new laravel project

    laravel new <project name>
  2. cd into project directory

  3. Load all packages via terminal/ CMD (https://github.com/osiset/laravel-shopify/wiki/Installation)

    composer require osiset/laravel-shopify
    php artisan vendor:publish --tag=shopify-config
  4. Add your app to valet server with valet park

  5. Add SSL with valet secure

  6. Your app is now located at the following URL: https://<app-name>.test

  7. Go to your project folder. Navigate to shopify-app.php and find 'api_scopes'. Here you can set all Shopify API scopes that are needed for your app. A list of all API Scopes can be found here → https://shopify.dev/docs/admin-api/access-scopes.

  8. Go to web.php and edit the routes. Replace the existing routes with the following code. This way you’re addding middleware to the welcome page and you’re creating a route for the login page.

    Route::get('/', function () {
        return view('welcome');
    })->middleware(['verify.shopify'])->name('home');
    
    //This will redirect user to login page.
    Route::get('/login', function () {
        if (Auth::user()) {
            return redirect()->route('home');
        }
        return view('login');
    })->name('login');
  9. Replace content of welcome.blade.php with this one.

    @extends('shopify-app::layouts.default')
    
    @section('content')
        <!-- You are: (shop domain name) -->
        <p>You are: {{ Auth::user()->name }}</p>
    @endsection
    
    @section('scripts')
        @parent
    
        <script type="text/javascript">
            var AppBridge = window['app-bridge'];
            var actions = AppBridge.actions;
            var TitleBar = actions.TitleBar;
            var Button = actions.Button;
            var Redirect = actions.Redirect;
            var titleBarOptions = {
                title: 'Welcome',
            };
            var myTitleBar = TitleBar.create(app, titleBarOptions);
        </script>
    @endsection
  10. Edit User Model. Add following code to existing namespaces

    use Osiset\ShopifyApp\Contracts\ShopModel as IShopModel;
    use Osiset\ShopifyApp\Traits\ShopModel;
  11. Change class from this:

    class User extends Authenticatable

    to this:

    class User extends Authenticatable implements IShopModel
  12. add following line within your class

    use ShopModel;
  13. Your class should now look like this:

    <?php
    
    namespace App\Models;
    
    use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
    use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
    use Osiset\ShopifyApp\Contracts\ShopModel as IShopModel;
    use Osiset\ShopifyApp\Traits\ShopModel;
    
    class User extends Authenticatable implements IShopModel
    {
        use Notifiable;
        use ShopModel;
    
        /**
         * The attributes that are mass assignable.
         *
         * @var array
         */
        protected $fillable = [
            'name', 'email', 'password',
        ];
    
        /**
         * The attributes that should be hidden for arrays.
         *
         * @var array
         */
        protected $hidden = [
            'password', 'remember_token',
        ];
    }
  14. Setup your databse in your .env file.

  15. Nachdem alles durch ist, mit php artisan migrate alles migrieren

  16. If you visit your application you should get an error saying: “Osiset\ShopifyApp\Exceptions\MissingShopDomainException“.
    That is because we haven’t setup the from the intershop side yet.

Shopify

  1. Login to your Partner account and create a new app at https://partners.shopify.com/1844011/apps/new

  2. chose any app name

  3. set the url of your app that you created at step 6: https://<app-name>.test

  4. Set the redirect URL to: https://<app-name>.test/authenticate

  5. click on ‘create app’

  6. Copy your API key and API Secret

  7. Add API key and API secret to your .env within your laravel application

    SHOPIFY_API_KEY=xxxx
    SHOPIFY_API_SECRET=xxxx
    SHOPIFY_BILLING_ENABLED=1
  8. You can now visit your app at https://<app-name>.test/?shop=yourshopname.myshopify.com