The liquid is a coding language used by Shopify themes to create dynamic and customized shopping experiences for online stores.
So, What is it exactly?
Shopify Liquid is a template language created by Shopify and written in Ruby.
It provides a powerful set of tools for creating online stores. Liquid has been used by over half a million businesses worldwide, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies.
What is Liquid?
The liquid is a template language used by Shopify themes. It enables theme developers to dynamically generate content within their templates.
This means that instead of hard-coding content into your theme, you can use Liquid tags and variables to insert dynamic content that will be generated when the template is rendered.
How Does Liquid Work?
Liquid uses a combination of tags, objects, and filters to generate dynamic content.
Tags are used to indicate where dynamic content should be inserted, while objects and filters are used to specify what kind of dynamic content should be inserted.
For example, if you wanted to display a product’s price on your product page template.
Does Shopify Still Use Liquid?
Yes, Shopify still uses Liquid as its templating language.
Liquid has been powering Shopify themes since 2006 and continues to be a key part of the platform today.
While other e-commerce platforms have moved away from using Liquid, Shopify remains committed to it because of its flexibility and ease of use.
Is Shopify Liquid a Programming Language?
Shopify Liquid is a template engine created by Shopify and written in Ruby. It is used to load templates and output formatted HTML.
Liquid has two main purposes:
- To provide an easy way for template designers to create dynamic templates.
- To make it easier for programmers to develop themes and apps for Shopify.
The liquid is not a programming language, but it does have some features that are similar to programming languages.
For example, Liquid allows you to use variables, loops, and filters.
Shopify Liquid Language
Shopify’s Liquid language is used to load dynamic content onto pages in a Shopify store.
Liquid has two main purposes:
- To load data from Shopify stores onto pages. This data can be products, collections, customers, etc.
- To provide logic and control flow for these loaded objects. For example, if-else statements or loops can be used to iterate through products and output them in different ways on the page.
The liquid consists of three parts:
- Objects
- Tags
- filters.
Objects are pieces of data that can be accessed using Liquid tags. There are four types of Shopify objects: products, collections, customers, and orders.
All other data must be retrieved through the use of the API object. For example, say we wanted to display a list of all product titles on our website.
How to use Shopify Liquid?
If you’re not familiar with Liquid, don’t worry – it’s not as complicated as it sounds. In fact, once you get the hang of the basics, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to use.
To get started, let’s take a look at the three main components of Liquid: objects, tags, and filters.
Objects
It’s the basic building block of Liquid templates. They represent data that can be accessed and manipulated within the template.
For example, when you create a new product in Shopify.
An object is automatically created that contains all of the product’s information (title, description, price, etc.).
This object can then be used within the template to display the product data in any way you like.
Tags
It’s used to control the logic within a Liquid template. They are essentially mini-programs that execute when the template is rendered.
For example, there is a tag that will only output data if a certain condition is met (like if a product is in stock).
There are also tags for looping (repeating a section of code multiple times), including other templates, and more.
Filters
It’s used to modify data before it is outputted by a Liquid template.
For example, you might use a filter to format numbers as currency or convert text to upper case.
There are many built-in filters available in Shopify, and developers can also create custom filters to meet specific needs.
Now that we’ve covered the basics of Liquid syntax, let’s take a look at how it all comes together by walking through an example template.
Let’s say we want to create a simple product page that displays the product title, description, and price.
We would start by creating an object for our product:
{% product %}
Title: {{ product.title }}
Description: {{ product.description }}
Price: {{ product.price | money }}
{% endproduct %}
Next, we would add some tags to control the logic:
{% if product. available? %}
This product is available for purchase!
{% else %}
Sorry, this product is currently out of stock…
{% endif %}
Finally, we would add some filters to format our data:
{{product. title | upcase}} – {{product. price | money}}
This would output something like “MY PRODUCT – $9 . 99” on our page. As you can see.
Even this simple example demonstrates how powerful and flexible Liquid can be when building Shopify stores.
If you’re interested in learning more about Liquid or exploring what else it can do, be sure to check out the resources below.
How Does Shopify Liquid Help You?
Shopify Liquid is a versatile open-source template language created by Shopify.
It provides a layer of abstraction between the code that powers your Shopify theme and the display of that code on your storefront.
In other words, it helps you separate the structure of your theme from its appearance. This separation makes theme development faster, easier, and more flexible.
Here are five ways that Shopify Liquid can help you:
Helps Manage Complexity
A typical Shopify theme contains hundreds of templates, stylesheets, and JavaScript files.
Liquid enables you to break down these files into smaller components that are easy to manage and reuse.
Enables Template Inheritance
With Liquid, you can create parent and child templates.
This inheritance model helps you avoid duplicating code and makes it easy to update multiple templates at once.
Makes Themes more Modular
By making your theme more modular, Liquid makes it easier to change one small part of your theme without affecting the rest of your site. This flexibility is especially useful when developing responsive themes—themes that look good on both desktop and mobile devices.
Allows HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Liquid gives you the freedom to use the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that you know and love.
There’s no need to learn a new templating language; Liquid is easy to pick up if you’re already familiar with these technologies.
Integrates with Shopify’s APIs
Liquid allows you to access data from Shopify’s APIs, such as products, collections, orders, and customers.
Within your templates. This enables you to build dynamic themes that show personalized content for each visitor to your store.
Is Shopify Liquid Hard to Learn?
The liquid was created with the intention of being simple and easy to use. And for the most part, it is.
However, because it is a template language, there is a lot of syntaxes that must be learned in order to create dynamic content.
For those who are not familiar with programming or web development, this can be quite daunting.
Fortunately, there are plenty of resources available to help those who want to learn Liquid.
Shopify provides excellent documentation on its website, and there are numerous tutorials and articles online that can provide guidance.
Once you get the hang of the basics, creating dynamic content with Liquid becomes much easier.
So while learning Liquid may require some effort upfront, it is definitely worth it in the end.
With its flexibility and power, Liquid can help you take your Shopify themes to the next level.
Bottom Lines,
All in all, exploring Shopify Liquid is a great way to take your online store up a notch.
By understanding a few key concepts, you can give yourself more control over your shop page and improve the user experience for your customers.
So what are you waiting for? Start experimenting with Liquid today!
