Shopify API Silent Failures: 200 OK Means Nothing

The Nightmare

You're building a Shopify integration. You send a PUT request to update a product's meta description. The API returns 200 OK. The response body shows your updated data. Everything looks perfect.

The meta description didn't change. It's still the old value. The API accepted your request, said "sure, done!" and silently threw it in the trash.

This isn't a bug — it's how Shopify designed it. Meta descriptions are stored as metafields, not product attributes. The product endpoint accepts the field (for backwards compatibility or whatever reason), acknowledges it, and does nothing.

The Metafields Fix

To actually update a product's meta description, you need a separate API call:

// This looks like it works but DOESN'T
PUT /admin/api/2024-01/products/{id}.json
{ product: { meta_description: "your new description" } }
// Returns 200 ✓ — but silently ignores the change


// This ACTUALLY works
POST /admin/api/2024-01/products/{id}/metafields.json
{
  metafield: {
    namespace: "global",
    key: "description_tag",
    value: "your new description",
    type: "single_line_text_field"
  }
}

The Collections 406 Nightmare

It gets worse. Try to update a collection via the collections.json endpoint:

// Returns 406 Not Acceptable — no explanation
PUT /admin/api/2024-01/collections/{id}.json


// The actual endpoint you need
PUT /admin/api/2024-01/custom_collections/{id}.json

The collections endpoint is read-only for most operations. You need custom_collections for custom collections and smart_collections for smart/automated ones. The 406 error gives you zero useful information about what went wrong.

Why AI Makes This Worse

Ask any AI to help you update Shopify meta descriptions and it'll give you the product PUT endpoint. It looks right. It compiles. It returns 200. You move on. Days later you realize nothing actually changed, and you've been deploying broken code to production.

AI doesn't know about these silent failures because they're barely documented. The training data contains thousands of Shopify tutorials, most of which are wrong about this exact thing.

The Cost

We burned roughly 4-6 hours on these two issues during a single Shopify integration project. Multiply that across every developer hitting the same undocumented behavior, and Shopify has cost the developer community thousands of collective hours.

How to Verify

Always, always, ALWAYS read back after writing to Shopify's API. Don't trust the 200 response. Fetch the resource again and confirm your change actually persisted.