Language considerations
Shopify Functions support any language that compiles to WebAssembly (Wasm), such as Rust, Zig, or TinyGo. Functions that are compiled to Wasm need to meet our WebAssembly API specifications, and our platform binary and performance limitations.
This guide introduces the language support and tooling that's available in Shopify Functions.
Anchor to Functions environmentFunctions environment
Shopify Functions operates in critical buyer flows such as Checkout. For a given Checkout request there may be multiple functions executed, each one adding to the overall latency of the checkout request. For this reason, Shopify places a number of platform limits, many of which can be measured locally using Shopify CLI.
Anchor to Choosing a languageChoosing a language
Languages that compile directly to WebAssembly, such as Rust, perform better than dynamic languages, such as JavaScript. If your function targets a public app, expects to operate on a large number of line items, or is computationally complex, then choose Rust to stay within the Shopify Functions instruction count requirements.
For prototyping ideas, JavaScript is a good starting point if you're familiar with the language. However, expect to run into instruction limits sooner than if you wrote the equivalent function logic in a language that compiles to WebAssembly directly, such as Rust.
Anchor to Available language supportAvailable language support
Learn about the support for Rust in Shopify Functions.
Learn about the support for JavaScript and TypeScript in Shopify Functions.
Learn about the using other languages that support WebAssembly in Shopify Functions.
Anchor to Next stepsNext steps
- Learn about how data is input to and output from Shopify Functions.
- Explore the references for each Function API.
- Get familiar with testing and debugging practices that pertain to Shopify Functions.