Nonunique order name is allowed even though documentation says otherwise?

GraphQL Admin API Troubleshooting
1

I am very surprised that I was able to create two orders with the same name within the same store even though Shopify’s documentation says the order names should be unique:

name

•String!

non-null

The unique identifier for the order that appears on the order page in the Shopify admin and the Order status page. For example, “#1001”, “EN1001”, or “1001-A”. This value isn’t unique across multiple stores. Use this field to identify orders in the Shopify admin and for order tracking.

This looks like a bug on Shopify because only order names are public to customers rather than the unique order number or shopify order id and when someone looks up the order by order name, it will return inconsistent order result when there are multiple orders with the same name. It will also break backends that rely on order name being unique within the same store:

Step to reproduce:

running this twice will create two shopify orders with the same name but different shopify order ids!

mutation orderCreate($order: OrderCreateOrderInput!, $options: OrderCreateOptionsInput) {
  orderCreate(order: $order, options: $options) {
    userErrors {
      field
      message
    }
    order {
      id
      totalTaxSet {
        shopMoney {
          amount
          currencyCode
        }
      }
      lineItems(first: 5) {
        nodes {
          variant {
            id
          }
          id
          title
          quantity
          taxLines {
            title
            rate
            priceSet {
              shopMoney {
                amount
                currencyCode
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "order": {
    "currency": "EUR",
    "name":"test",
    "lineItems": [
      {
        "title": "Big Brown Bear Boots",
        "priceSet": {
          "shopMoney": {
            "amount": 74.99,
            "currencyCode": "EUR"
          }
        },
        "quantity": 3,
        "taxLines": [
          {
            "priceSet": {
              "shopMoney": {
                "amount": 13.5,
                "currencyCode": "EUR"
              }
            },
            "rate": 0.06,
            "title": "State tax"
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "transactions": [
      {
        "kind": "SALE",
        "status": "SUCCESS",
        "amountSet": {
          "shopMoney": {
            "amount": 238.47,
            "currencyCode": "EUR"
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}
2

Yes you definitely can. I took advantage of it when I needed to specifically replicate an order and then kill the old one.

3

but documentation says it is unique within the same store, which contradicts the actual behavior.