Conditional metafield definitions

By default, metafield definitions apply to every resource on their owner type. For example, Product metafield definitions apply to all products and appear on all product detail pages in the merchant admin.

However, some metafield definitions should only apply to a subset of resources. For example, Shoe size is a valid metafield for Shoes products but wouldn't apply to Sweaters.

Metafield definition constraints provide a way to conditionally apply definitions based on the characteristics of a resource. For example, each category metafield comes with a set of constraints, which determine what product categories the metafield applies to.

At the core of the conditional metafields system are constraint subtypes. Constraint subtypes are key | value pairs that identify a "subtype" of a metafield owner type.

For example, because aa-8 is the ID of the Shoes product category, the Shoes constraint subtype is identified by:

Currently, Shopify only supports constraint subtypes that correspond to product categories on Product metafield definitions. These constraint subtypes all have a key equal to category.

The constraints field can be used to view a metafield definition's constraints.

The constraintSubtype and constraintStatus arguments can be used to filter metafield definitions queries based on constraints.

The constraintSubtype argument returns only metafield definitions that apply to the identified subtype. Metafield definitions are applicable to a constraint subtype if one of the following criteria is met:

• The metafield definition has a constraint matching the constraintSubtype.
• The metafield definition does not have any constraints, which means the definition applies to all constraint subtypes.

The constraintStatus argument filters metafields based on whether they are constrained or unconstrained. constraintStatus accepts the following values:

• CONSTRAINED_ONLY
• UNCONSTRAINED_ONLY
• CONSTRAINED_AND_UNCONSTRAINED

constraintSubtype and constraintStatus can also be used on the standardMetafieldDefinitionTemplates query in order to query metafield standard templates based on their constraints.