Shopify Liquid / API: Accessing another customers' metafield data in liquid

Question

I'm working with a client that wants to build some custom rudimentary affiliate functionality. The requirement includes two types of users: "owners" who are technically the affiliates and "customers". We are planning to use metafields to assign owners to customers (simply an integer metafield in the customer object that holds the owners userid, managed by a site admin). We would like to create a liquid template, accessible by the owners, that show a list of their customers and some customer and order metafield data. This requires one user (the owners) to be able to each into another user's (customers) metafield data. Is this possible in liquid without creating an externally hosted app?

If not, I assume this is possible via the API. In that case, is it possible to use the API right in liquid without creating an externally hosted app?

Thanks!

Answer 1

No, Shopify does not allow you to access customer objects (and by extension, metafields on other customer objects) other than the customer that is currently logged in.

To access arbitrary customer information, you will need to set up an app with admin permissions to access customers. While technically you could make admin API calls through the front-end, doing so would require exposing admin-level API credentials and would be a Very Bad Idea.

You will definitely want an externally-hosted app to run this code on, as the app you are describing will have access to PII and other sensitive data.