Edits in the 'error' state

While the vast majority of edits complete successfully you may see that one of your edits is no longer processing but in the 'Error' state. This article explains the different causes of edit errors and what next steps you should take.

Unable to connect to the Shopify API

If the app is unable to connect to the Shopify API after several retries the edit will error out. The two most common reasons the app is unable to connect to the API are a) the Shopify store has uninstalled the app or b) the Shopify API was temporarily offline. In cases where the Shopify API was temporarily offline retrying the edit should be sufficient to make it work again.

Edit timed out

If your edit is taking several days to complete it is possible that it will timeout. In most cases edits will not time out before four days and will only time out after that if there is new code deployed. Usually the only edits that take this long are ones that update tens or hundreds of thousands of products and that modify a lot of metafields. (Shopify requires additional API calls for each metafield change which can slow things down.) For situations like this we recommend either splitting the edits in to small segments or only updating the metafields that have new values. This will make the edits run quicker and have less chance of timing out.

System maintenance

Once or twice a year we may need to perform maintenance that requires stopping all running edits. This maintenance will be announced in advance on https://status.ablestar.com/ and will usually occur during a period of low usage like a Sunday morning or the week between Christmas and New Years.

A bug in our code or the Shopify API

Both Ablestar and Shopify are constantly releasing new features and it is possible a code change will introduce a new bug that prevents the edit from completing successfully. These types of errors usually occur before any products in the edit are modified or will always occur when the edit reaches the same product. If this is the case please let us know and we'll do our best to get the problem fixed as soon as possible.