About customer-facing purchase option portals

An app proxy fetches data from an app proxy server to display on a page of the online store.

For example, a shop with the domain coffee.example.com and the shop sells coffee with various purchase options. Shopify handles the storefront and the checkout through the coffee.example.com domain.

If the app managing the purchase options provides its own customer-facing page, then that page might redirect the customer to a different domain. This redirection could confuse the customer. By using an app proxy, you can ensure the entire experience stays under the coffee.example.com domain.

To learn how to set up an app proxy, refer to our application proxy tutorial.

There are several ways to render an app proxy.

Full page rendering replaces the shop's theme entirely. We recommend using the full page approach because apps and themes can execute untrusted JavaScript code on the storefront.

If the HTTP response from the proxy URL has Content-Type: application/liquid set in the header, then Shopify renders any Liquid code in the request body in the context of the shop using the shop's theme.

When setting up your customer-facing purchase option portal, consider the following components:

• Cookie headers: Cookie headers are stripped on app proxies. If you need to persist information between requests, such as authentication tokens, then use query string parameters.

• Assets paths: Apps run behind the app proxy in the storefront. You might need to adjust how assets are served from your app because the URLs will use the app proxy's prefix.

• Create a customer-facing purchase option portal