Basics​

Learn about Sline basics and apply them in theme development alongside Sline objects, filters, and tags.

Resource handles​

Resource handles are unique identifiers that distinguish different resources in a store. Resource handles are used to construct resource URLs or to retrieve information about corresponding objects.

Common resource objects that have handles include product, collection, article, and blog. Other resource objects, such as linklists and link, also have handles.

Each resource for the same object has its unique handle. Taking the product object as an example, if a store has two different products, their resource handles are distinct.

Create and modify handles​

By default, handles are automatically generated based on the resource title or name when the resource is created. The automatically generated handles follow these rules:

• Handles for alphabetic characters are always in lowercase.
• Spaces and special characters are automatically replaced with hyphens (-).
• Multiple consecutive spaces or special characters are replaced with a single hyphen.
• Leading spaces or special characters are removed.
• Handles within the same resource are unique. If titles or names in the same resource are duplicated, handles are automatically marked with incrementing numbers, increasing by one each time. For example, if two products have the same title bed, their handles would be bed and bed-1 respectively.

Once a resource is added, changing its title will not update the handle.

To modify the resource handle, you need to go to the specific resource page in the SHOPLINE Admin, find the Search engine optimization section, and modify the handle there. If you have referenced the resource using its handle, ensure to update these references when modifying the handle.

Reference handles​

All objects with handles have a handle property. For example, you can output a product's handle using product.handle. You can also reference an object within a parent object using its handle in two ways:

• Square bracket notation [ ]: Enclose the handle string or variables in brackets. For example, linklists["header"] or linklists[header].
• Dot notation .: Use a dot to directly connect the parent object with the handle, for example, linklists.header.

Operators​

Sline supports basic logical and comparison operators, which can be used with the if tag and value expressions.

Operator precedence​

In Sline templates, the precedence of logical operators follows the rules of conventional programming languages. The && operator has higher precedence than the || operator. Conditional expressions are evaluated from left to right, prioritizing all && operations before || operations.

{{#if false || true || true && false }}
This evaluates to true, because the calculation proceeds as follows:
1. false || true → true
2. true && false → false
3. true || false → true
{{/if}}

You can use () to change the evaluation order. The system first executes the expression within (), and then proceeds with the remaining expressions.

{{#if true && (true && true) || false }}
This evaluates to true, with explicit calculation steps:
1. (true && true)   → true
2. true && true     → true
3. true || false    → true
{{/if}}

Data types​

Sline supports output of the following data types.

string​

A series of characters that are enclosed in double quotes(""), single quotes(''), or backticks(``).

Double quotes ""

Single quotes ''

Backticks ``

number​

Numeric value, including floats(float) and integers(int).

{{ 42 }}   <!-- integer -->
{{ 3.14 }} <!-- float -->

boolean​

Binary values, either true or false.

nil​

An undefined value.

Expressions that return nil do not produce any output. nil is considered false in conditional statements.

array​

A list of variables of any type.

To access all items in an array, use the for helper to iterate over each item in the array.

To access a specific item in an array, use the notation []. An array index starts at 0.

You cannot initialize an array directly with Sline. However, you can use the split filter to convert a comma-separated string into an array.

Truthy and falsy​

All data types must return either true or false. Those that return true by default are called truthy, and those that return false by default are called falsy.

Sline may treat unexpected values as truthy. Refer to the following table for common values that are considered to be truthy or falsy.

Example​

When checking values in Sline, be cautious that a value may not be in the format you expect, but it can still be regarded as truthy.

<!-- It is true if current_tags is an empty array. Use size to determine if it is empty. -->
{{#if current_tags | size() > 0}}
Presence tag.
{{#else/}}
Tag is empty.
{{/if}}

Whitespace control​

You can strip the whitespaces (such as spaces, newlines, and tabs) from the output in Sline by adding a ~ character next to the curly braces. This tells Sline to automatically remove all whitespaces adjacent to the ~ symbol when parsing the template, until it encounters a non-whitespace character or another Sline expression.

start
{{~ settings.product.title ~}}
end