In the ecommerce industry, Liquid stands out as a powerful and indispensable tool enabling developers to create dynamic, customizable content tailored to specific customer needs. Shopify has chosen Liquid as its foundation language, allowing merchants to integrate static and dynamic content across their stores. This guide provides a deep dive into Liquid’s data types, explain their structure, usage, and the crucial role each type plays in building a professional, and effective Shopify website.

Table of content

• Overall about Liquid template
• Types of Liquid
  • String
  • Number
  • Boolean
  • Nil
  • Array

Overall about Liquid template

A language template is a website language that web designers use to build website combined with static content and dynamic content. The former is the same on multiple pages and the later changes from one page to the next. Liquid is a template language that Shopify uses.

Liquid is now available as an open source project on GitHub and used by a lot of websites and companies. Liquid is suitable for uploading dynamic content on websites.

Types of Liquid

Liquid has five main types: String, Number, Boolean, Nil and Array. Each type will be presented in the next parts.

String

In Liquid template, you declare a string by grouping variable’s value in single or double quotes. For example, you insert my_string after a call order assign to announce a string name Hello World.

{% assign my_string = "Hello World!" %}

Number

Number allows you to add numbers or integers in the code. For instance, you include the size of int.

{% assign my_int = 25 %}
{% assign my_float = 39.756 %}

Boolean

Boolean in a Liquid type that give answer to true or false. There is no quotations when you declare a boolean.

{% assign foo = true %}
{% assign bar = false %}

Nil

Nil is the most special type of Liquid language. Nil is an empty value which is returned when Liquid code has no result.

Nil gives false result in case that if blocks and other Liquid tags that check the truthfulness of statement.

In the example below, unless the user exists (that is, user return nil), Liquid will not print the greeting:

{% if user %}
  Hello {{ user.name }}!
{% endif %}

Tags or outputs that return nil will not be displayed on the front page.

Input

The current user is {{ user.name }}

Output

The current user is

Array

Array is used the most in Liquid language template. Array can hold lists of variables of any type. You can access any items or specific items in array.

Accessing items in array

You go through each item in the array using an iteration tag which runs blocks of code repeatedly such as for, cycle, tablerow to access all items in an array.

Input

<!-- if site.users = "Tobi", "Laura", "Tetsuro", "Adam" -->
{% for user in site.users %}
  {{ user }}
{% endfor %}

Output

Tobi Laura Tetsuro Adam

In order to access a specific item, you use square bracket notation.

Input

<!-- if site.users = "Tobi", "Laura", "Tetsuro", "Adam" -->
{{ site.users[0] }}
{{ site.users[1] }}
{{ site.users[3] }}

Output

Tobi
Laura
Adam

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Liquid is more than just a programming language; it’s a powerful asset that transforms e-commerce websites into engaging, customer-centric platforms. From Strings and Numbers to Booleans, Nil values, and Arrays, each data type in Liquid contributes to a seamless, modern, and professional web experience. We hope this tutorial has equipped you with the knowledge to master Liquid, create impressive dynamic content, and unlock the full potential of Shopify for your online store.