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Shopify Theme Scaffold

This repository provides a suggested directory structure and Grunt configuration for making the Shopify theme development process as smooth as possible. It's closely modelled on the setup used at Disco when building Shopify themes.

It ships with a few sample theme files, mostly empty, that demonstrate how the scaffold works. You should be able to slot any number of existing themes or theme frameworks in. If you're starting off with a new theme, some of the open-source options you have are:

You also have (shameless plug alert) a non-open-source, paid option in the form of Bootstrap for Shopify.

Dependencies and Setup

You're going to need nodejs and npm in order to run:

npm install

from the base directory, which should do the rest.

Development Builds

Running grunt build will compile all of your files into the .build directory in the directory structure expected by Shopify. You can run grunt dist to additionally generate a .zip file, packaging these files up for direct upload through the Shopify Admin interface.

If you're familiar with the shopify_theme gem, just add your theme configuration details to a config.yml file in the .build directory, then run theme watch in that directory. Subsequent builds of your theme that alter files in the theme directory will have their changes automatically uploaded to Shopify.

Instead of running grunt build every time you want to rebuild your theme, you can use the grunt watch command to start a process watching all of your files for changes. The watch command has plenty of smarts to avoid recompiling your entire theme every time a single file changes.

Production Builds

The standard grunt build command assumes a development environment, meaning the built theme is optimised for fast iteration and easy debugging. To build a "production" version of your theme, with minified assets and optimised images, run grunt build --env=production.

We highly recommend using DeployBot to deploy Shopify themes in production. Their new build server functionality is a perfect match for a Grunt-driven theme build process.

Directory Structure

Here's a breakdown of the default directory structure that ships with the scaffold:

theme/assets/js

Any Javascript files you'd like concatenated and (in production) minified should go in here.

For each final script file you'd like to use in your theme, set up an Uglify files target in Gruntfile.coffee like this:

# Concatenation and minification of Javascript.
uglify:
  options:
    ... some options ...
  js:
    files:
      '.build/assets/script.js.liquid': ['theme/assets/js/script-*.js']

theme/assets/scss

Any stylesheets you'd like to be precompiled and (in production) minified should go in here.

For each final stylesheet file you'd like to use in your theme, set up a Sass files target in Gruntfile.coffee like this:

# Compilation of SCSS files to compressed .css.liquid files.
sass:
  options:
    ... some options ...
  theme:
    files:
      '.build/assets/styles.css.liquid': 'theme/assets/scss/styles.scss'

theme/assets/static

Add any static assets that don't require preprocessing here - for example images, font files, and pre-minified third-party Javascript libraries. Unlike Shopify's /assets directory, you can nest your files here in subdirectories. Just be aware that the directory structure is flattened in the build process, so files with the same name will conflict. This shouldn't be an issue if you use a simple nesting structure (for example, one subdirectory for each asset type).

Image files (PNG, GIF, JPG and SVG) will be optimised using grunt-contrib-imagemin before being output to the .build directory.

theme/layout

All .liquid files in theme/layout are copied directly into .build/layout on compilation.

theme/locales

All .json files in theme/locales are copied directly into .build/locales on compilation.

theme/settings

The settings_schema.json file will be copied from theme/settings to .build/config on compilation.

theme/snippets

All .liquid files in theme/snippets are copied directly into .build/templates on compilation.

theme/templates

All .liquid files in theme/templates are copied directly into .build/templates on compilation. Customer templates in theme/templates/customers are copied to .build/templates/customers.

Contributions

Contributions are very much welcome! Just open a pull request, or raise an issue to discuss a proposed change.

About the Author

Gavin Ballard is a developer at Disco, specialising in Shopify development. Related projects: