Support product variants

Products can be broken up into a maximum of three options, and a single combination of those options is a variant. For example, if a t-shirt comes in sizes S, M, and L, and colors Black, White, and Red, then S/Black would be a variant of that product.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to support product variants in your theme.

Resources

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To support product variants, you'll use the following:

The product object
The variant object

Implementing product variants

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To support variants in your theme, you need to implement the following components:

Variant deep link handling: A variant can be linked to directly, so you should ensure that the product information is updated for the "selected" variant when a variant is referenced in a product link.
Variant selectors: You should build a variant selector to allow customers to easily browse the available variants of a product. Selecting a variant should update the page with variant-specific information.

You might want to add these components to a section that can be included in a JSON product template, or a Liquid product template.

Variant deep link handling

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Variant deep links are product links that contain a ?variant=[variant-id] query parameter, where [variant-id] is the ID of the associated variant. This allows you to link directly to a variant. You can add this functionality to a section that can be included in a JSON product template, or a Liquid product template.

When variants are deep-linked, you can access which variant is linked through the selected_variant attribute of the product object. However, a product link won't always contain a deep-linked variant. In these cases, you can default to the selected, first available, or first variant through the selected_or_first_available_variant attribute.

You can also deep link using the format ?option_values=[option-value-id-1],...,[option-value-id-N] where [option-value-id] is the ID of the associated option value. One option value ID must be provided per product option and the order must match the option order. If the option value combination maps to a variant that is not present, the requested option values will be selected but the product fields selected_variant and selected_or_first_available_variant will return null.

After you identify the variant that you want to display, you need to ensure that the following product elements reflect it:

Product media
Product price
Variant selector

Example

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The following example assigns a default variant using product.selected_or_first_available_variant, populates a basic media and price display based on that variant, and selects that variant in a basic variant selector.

Variant selectors

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You can use a single variant selector where each option represents a variant. However, products may have more than one option. For a better buyer experience and to avoid future compatibility issues, we recommend that you present each of these options separately in the UI. To achieve this, you can use the product.options_with_values object to generate a selector for each option. You can then use JavaScript to update the state when a new option value is selected.

Variant selectors should be added to a section that can be included in a JSON product template, or a Liquid product template. They can also be included in product grid or product quick view snippets to allow customers to view variants on other pages, like collections.