Hygraph is a federated content management platform built on a GraphQL-native architecture. It enables businesses to unify data, create impactful digital experiences, and modernize their tech stacks. Learn more at Hygraph Product Page.
What technical requirements are needed to integrate Hygraph with Shopify Hydrogen?
To integrate Hygraph with Shopify Hydrogen, you need:
Yes, Hygraph offers a powerful GraphQL API for efficient content fetching and management. Learn more at Hygraph API Reference.
Where can I find technical documentation for Hygraph?
Comprehensive technical documentation is available at Hygraph Documentation, covering everything from onboarding to advanced integrations.
Features & Capabilities
What are the key features and capabilities of Hygraph?
Hygraph offers GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, scalability, rapid content delivery, and a user-friendly interface. It supports integrations with platforms like Netlify, Vercel, Shopify, BigCommerce, and more. For a full list, visit Hygraph Features.
What integrations does Hygraph support?
Hygraph supports a wide range of integrations, including:
How does Hygraph optimize content delivery performance?
Hygraph is designed for rapid content distribution and responsiveness, which improves user experience, engagement, and search engine rankings. Optimized delivery helps reduce bounce rates and increase conversions. For more details, visit this page.
Is Hygraph easy to use for non-technical users?
Yes, Hygraph is praised for its intuitive and logical interface. Customers report that even non-technical users can start using it right away, making it accessible for both technical and non-technical teams.
Pricing & Plans
What is Hygraph's pricing model?
Hygraph offers a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans. For full details, visit the Hygraph Pricing Page.
Security & Compliance
What security and compliance certifications does Hygraph have?
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant. These certifications ensure enterprise-grade security and data protection. For more details, visit Hygraph Security Features.
What security features does Hygraph offer?
Hygraph provides SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and sandbox environments to protect sensitive data and meet regulatory standards. More information is available at Hygraph Security Features.
Use Cases & Benefits
Who can benefit from using Hygraph?
Hygraph is ideal for developers, IT decision-makers, content creators, project/program managers, agencies, solution partners, and technology partners. It is especially beneficial for modern software companies, enterprises seeking to modernize, and brands aiming to scale across geographies or re-platform from traditional solutions.
What industries are represented in Hygraph's case studies?
Hygraph's case studies span industries such as Food and Beverage (Dr. Oetker), Consumer Electronics (Samsung), Automotive (AutoWeb), Healthcare (Vision Healthcare), Travel and Hospitality (HolidayCheck), Media and Publishing, eCommerce, SaaS (Bellhop), Marketplace, Education Technology, and Wellness and Fitness. See more at Hygraph Case Studies.
Can you share specific customer success stories using Hygraph?
Yes. For example, Komax achieved a 3X faster time to market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement with a scalable platform, and Dr. Oetker enhanced their digital experience using MACH architecture. Explore more success stories here.
What business impact can customers expect from using Hygraph?
Customers can expect significant time savings, ease of use, faster speed-to-market, and enhanced customer experience through consistent and scalable content delivery. These benefits help businesses modernize their tech stack and achieve operational efficiency.
How long does it take to implement Hygraph and how easy is it to start?
Hygraph is designed for quick implementation. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months from initial contact. Customers can get started quickly by signing up for a free account and using onboarding resources. Learn more at Hygraph Documentation.
Pain Points & Solutions
What core problems does Hygraph solve?
Hygraph reduces reliance on developers for content updates, modernizes legacy tech stacks, addresses conflicting needs of global teams, and improves user experience for content creation. Financially, it lowers operational costs, speeds up time-to-market, and supports scalability. Technically, it simplifies development workflows, streamlines query management, and resolves cache and integration challenges.
What pain points do Hygraph customers commonly express?
Customers often mention operational pains (developer reliance, outdated tech stacks, global team conflicts, clunky content creation), financial pains (high costs, slow speed-to-market, expensive maintenance, scalability challenges), and technical pains (boilerplate code, overwhelming queries, evolving schemas, cache problems, OpenID integration challenges). Hygraph addresses these with tailored solutions. See product page for details.
How does Hygraph solve pain points for different personas?
Hygraph tailors solutions for developers (simplifies code and queries), content creators/project managers (intuitive interface for independent updates), and business stakeholders (reduces costs, supports scalability, accelerates speed-to-market). For more, visit product page.
What KPIs and metrics are associated with the pain points Hygraph solves?
Key metrics include time saved on content updates, system uptime, consistency across regions, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, time to market, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage. For more, see CMS KPIs Blog.
Support & Implementation
What customer service or support is available after purchasing Hygraph?
Hygraph offers 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance. All users have access to documentation, video tutorials, and a community Slack channel. More info at Hygraph Contact Page.
What training and technical support is available to help customers get started?
Hygraph provides onboarding sessions for enterprise customers, 24/7 support, training resources (video tutorials, documentation, webinars), and Customer Success Managers for expert guidance. See Hygraph Contact Page for details.
How does Hygraph handle maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting?
Hygraph offers 24/7 support for maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance, and all users can access documentation and the community Slack channel for additional support.
Competition & Comparison
Why choose Hygraph over alternatives in the market?
Hygraph stands out for its GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, scalability, and cost efficiency. It enables impactful digital experiences and modernizes tech stacks. For more, visit product page.
Customer Proof & Case Studies
Who are some of Hygraph's customers?
Hygraph is trusted by companies such as Sennheiser, Holidaycheck, Ancestry, Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Epic Games, Bandai Namco, Gamescom, Leo Vegas, and Clayton Homes. See more at Hygraph Case Studies.
Blog & Content Modeling
Where can I find the Hygraph blog?
The Hygraph Blog provides the latest updates, developer tutorials, and essential guides to content modeling. Visit the Hygraph Blog.
Who authored the blog 'Integrating a headless CMS with Shopify Hydrogen'?
The blog was written by Mdu Sibisi, an Oracle-certified software developer and technical writer with over ten years of experience.
What kind of content can I find in the Hygraph Blog?
The blog includes developer tutorials, latest updates, and essential guides to content modeling.
You can easily integrate Hydrogen with a headless CMS and we’ll show you how with Hygraph.
Written by Mdu
on Jul 17, 2023
You might want to build your online storefront using a headless CMS for several reasons. You might wish to greater customization of your website, faster server-side rendering, smart caching, or progressive hydration.
Built on top of Remix, Shopify's full-stack web framework, Hydrogen, is a headless framework that allows you to develop and deliver custom storefronts for your Shopify site. You can easily integrate Hydrogen with a headless CMS, and we’ll show you how with Hygraph.
Before jumping into the step-by-step tutorial, let's back up and explain what Shopify Hydrogen is.
You already know Hydrogen is a headless framework. By default, it’s designed to work with Remix, but it provides a React library that’s portable to other supporting frameworks. Hydrogen's integrated storefront API client lets you accelerate your eCommerce development with pre-built components, utilities, and hooks.
Some of the key benefits of Hydrogen include:
Customization: Build a highly customized Shopify storefront without relying on pre-built themes or templates. Complete control over the design and functionality of your website means you can create a unique user experience for your brand.
Fast server-side rendering: Hydrogen renders pages on the server side, which can significantly reduce page load times. That’s especially important for eCommerce sites, where slow loading can mean frustrated customers or lost sales.
Improved SEO: Server-side rendering improves SEO by making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site. This means your site is more likely to appear at the top of search engine results pages, which can drive traffic and increase sales.
Greater flexibility: Hydrogen offers more control over your storefront than traditional Shopify themes or templates, so you can easily customize your site to meet the unique needs of your business. You can also make changes quickly and easily as your business evolves.
#Building a headless content platform with Shopify Hydrogen and Hygraph
To follow along with this tutorial, you need to have the following lined up:
A Shopify store named Hygraph-Hydrogen Store with at least two products. You can add any two products, but if you want to use the same data as this tutorial, you can add these.
Node.js v16 or later and npm v7 or later installed on your local machine.
A web browser and code editor.
Installing Shopify for Hygraph
On your Hygraph project dashboard, select Apps from the sidebar and click Go to Marketplace.
From the Hygraph marketplace, select Shopify.
On the Shopify app description page, click Install Shopify for Hygraph.
On the app installation page, select your project and environment and click Install app.
On the app permission authorization page, click Authorize app.
On the Shopify configuration page, fill out the store token and the store domain and click Save. You can find more information about how to access these details from the helper links provided on the page. Take note of the values—you’ll use them later on.
Click Schema in the sidebar and ensure the *Product model is selected.
Next, create a Single line text field with the display name color. This field stores the color of the product.
.
Your Product model page should now look like this:
Adding content to the product model
To add some content to the model that you just created, select Content from the sidebar and click Add entry.
On the new product page, click Select product from Shopify to select a product. Make sure you also provide a color for your product.
Click Save & publish to push the product to the published stage so that it can be retrieved from the API endpoint. Do this for all your products.
Your Product content page should now look like this:
Select API playground from the sidebar and run the Products query to check whether the products you previously added can be retrieved. If the query returns some data, everything is working as expected, and you can move on to enable API access.
Enable API access. This guide enables full public API access, though you can secure your API with permanent auth tokens. Copy the content API endpoint—you’ll use it later.
Creating the Hydrogen storefront
To create a new Hydrogen storefront, run the following command in the terminal:
npm create @shopify/hydrogen@latest
Choose Hello World as your template, JavaScript for the language, hydrogen-hygraph-storefront for the app location, and select Yes to install dependencies with npm.
Next, change into the hydrogen-hygraph-storefront directory and run npm run dev to confirm that the project was successfully created and all the dependencies installed. Open http://localhost:3000 on your browser, and you should see the following page:
You must now configure your storefront token in the .env file. Open the .env file in the project root folder and replace the PUBLIC_STOREFRONT_API_TOKEN and PUBLIC_STORE_DOMAIN values with the Shopify store credentials that you obtained when configuring the Shopify app in the Hygraph CMS.
Configuring Tailwind and creating the layout
You need to configure Tailwind CSS to apply basic styling to the storefront. Execute the following command to install Tailwind CSS and the dependencies it relies on:
Run the command npx tailwindcss init -p to generate the Tailwind CSS configuration files tailwind.config.js and postcss.config.js. Open tailwind.config.js and replace the existing code with the code below that points Tailwind to all the template files:
/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
module.exports={
content:[
"./app/**/*.{js,ts,jsx,tsx}",
],
theme:{
extend:{},
},
plugins:[],
}
Create a file named tailwind.css in the app/styles folder and add the following Tailwind directives:
@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;
Open the package.json file and replace the dev and build scripts with the following scripts, which will build your development and production Tailwind CSS:
"build":"npm run build:css && shopify hydrogen build --entry ./server",
The code above imports the Tailwind build and wraps the entire application with the Layout component that you created previously. It also retrieves your Shopify store name and passes it to the Layout component as a prop to display as a page title.
Fetching and displaying the products.
To fetch and display all the products that you added to your Shopify store, create a file named index.js in the app/routes folder and add the code below:
import{ useLoaderData }from'@remix-run/react';
import{Image}from'@shopify/hydrogen';
exportconstmeta=()=>{
return{
title:'Hydrogen',
description:'A custom storefront powered by Hydrogen'
The code above defines two queries: getAllProductsFromHygraph, which specifies the data to be fetched from Hygraph; and getAllProductsFromShopify, which specifies the data to be fetched from Shopify.
A Remix loader function fetches data from the Hygraph Content API endpoint using the getAllProductsFromHygraph query. It loops through the Hygraph response, extracts the productId field from each object, and pushes the values of these fields into the productsArray array.
The loader function uses Hydrogen's storefront param to query the Shopify storefront using the getAllProductsFromShopify query and passing the productsArray as a variable. This retrieves all the products whose ID is defined in the productsArray variable.
The code loops through the products array, which contains the products fetched from the Shopify storefront, and renders the necessary data. It also renders the custom field color, which you defined in the Hygraph CMS.
Editor's Note
Be sure to replace <your-hygraph-content-api-endpoint> with your own API endpoint.
Testing the final application
To test whether the integration is successful, execute npm run dev in your terminal to start a local development server and navigate to http://localhost:3000 on your browser. If you used the two products from this tutorial’s repo, you should see the following:
The rendered webpage shows the product image, title, and price fetched from Shopify. The product color was fetched from Hygraph.
In brief:
You fetch the IDs of the products from Hygraph.
You use the IDs to specify the products to fetch from your Shopify store.
You display all the product details by combining the data fetched from Hygraph and Shopify.
Hydrogen gives you significantly more flexibility and customization over your Shopify storefront. Integrate it with a federated content management platform like Hygraph, and you’ve got a headless content platform that can evolve with your eCommerce application as quickly as your users need you to.
Blog Author
Mdu Sibisi
Technical writer
Mdu Sibisi is an Oracle-certified software developer and blogger with over ten years of experience, primarily in object-orientated languages. He's been writing about tech for eight years.
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