Cracking the 10,000 Product Mystery: Mastering Shopify's GraphQL API for Infinite Counts

Some days, you find yourself elbow-deep in code, swimming through the labyrinth of Shopify APIs like a fish in a new tank, only to realize your calculations have released the Kraken—over 10,000 products, and the store's about to blow. Imagine my surprise when I hit this wall of limitation on the GraphQL API while trying to migrate away from the familiar comforts of the soon-to-be deprecated REST API. Suddenly, the reality hit me like a cold splash of glacier water—January 2025 wasn't as far as it seemed, and I needed a fix, pronto.

Our Quest Begins: Searching for Unseen Counts

The Shopify GraphQL API seems like a glimmering treasure trove—until, of course, you realize it's guarding its secrets with a tenacious 10,000-product limit. It's like the bouncer at a club who couldn't care less how popular my query might be. But fear not, mates! There's always a backdoor (and thankfully, no velvet rope).

This issues arises when trying to count all products, including variants, beyond this mystical number. The productsCount query tiptoes as close as it can, but what happens when you're managing a Goliath of a store? Well, you parlay with precision using GraphQL, and yep, we’re going to do just that by getting a bit clever with our queries.

Adventures in Aligning our Variables

Remember how you used to line up all your toy soldiers in a perfect battle formation, ready to attack? That’s exactly how we’re going to outsmart this 10k ceiling. First up, let's delve into a workaround by dynamically paging through our products to count beyond what they let us see at first glance.

Here's where we get our hands dirty. We'll need to:

Create a Paginated Query: Dig into the pagination system. Instead of counting upfront, retrieve chunks of data—a moth to the flame style.
Iterate and Integrate: Loop through the paginated results—trusty loops, they never let us down.
Sum and Conquer: Add up those chunks to form the grand total.

Paginated Wonder

Here’s a nifty little setup for pagination. We craft a query that simply asks for products and their counts—but in bite-sized pieces. Think of it as snacking your way through a grocery list instead of devouring it in one go.

{
  products(first: 250) {
    edges {
      node {
        id
        variants {
          edges {
            node {
              id
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
    pageInfo {
      hasNextPage
      endCursor
    }
  }
}

This script, our lighthouse in the fog, fetches product IDs and their variant IDs until it can’t—stopping only when there’s absolutely no next page left. first: 250 sets the per-page limit as 250, which you can adjust to juggle efficiency versus API limits.

Navigating the Sea of Results

As the call of the sea guides the sailor, the hasNextPage and endCursor fields will guide our loop. Continue fetching until we’ve exhausted all possible pages. Add each round to a tally, plotting our course to total transparency.

Mix this up in your preferred scripting language, fetching and counting each query’s return diligently. For Python, a little something like:

import requests

def fetch_all_products_with_variants():
    total_count = 0
    has_next_page = True
    end_cursor = None
    while has_next_page:
        query = '''
        {
          products(first: 250, after: "%s") {
            edges {
              node {
                id
                variants {
                  edges {
                    node {
                      id
                    }
                  }
                }
              }
            }
            pageInfo {
              hasNextPage
              endCursor
            }
          }
        }
        ''' % (end_cursor if end_cursor else "")

        response = requests.post('https://yourstore.myshopify.com/admin/api/2021-07/graphql.json', headers=headers, data={'query': query})
        data = response.json()

        total_count += len(data['data']['products']['edges'])
        has_next_page = data['data']['products']['pageInfo']['hasNextPage']
        end_cursor = data['data']['products']['pageInfo']['endCursor']

    return total_count

print(f'Total products and variants count: {fetch_all_products_with_variants()}')

Fill in your headers with the store's credentials—Play it like a love song, friends.

Celebrating the Small Wins

We navigate these turbulent waters like trusty sailors, eventually finding ourselves back at the dock—pride in our hearts, a total count in our hands. What a marvel, realizing that patience and cleverness bypass Shopify’s fastidious guards. Our discovery doesn’t just help balance scales—it aligns us to thrive beyond limitations.

Embrace the quirky, celebrate the insightful—because, in this small universe of 1s and 0s, we have returned not only with counts but with stories aplenty! Keep exploring, keep sharing, and as always, happy coding!