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

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

• The product object
• The variant object

Implementing product variants

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

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.

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

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

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.

Note

Regardless of the approach you use for variant selection, you need to ensure that when a new variant is selected, the product media and price are updated to reflect the selected variant.

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.

Tip

Refer to the following files in Dawn for an example implementation:

• product-variant-picker.liquid section
• global.js asset