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Shopify Builds>Primitives>Metaobjects

Metaobjects

Definition

Metaobjects are merchant-defined content types in Shopify's admin. A merchant declares a definition with typed fields, creates entries against it, and references those entries from products, collections or other metaobjects through metafields. They hold structured content that isn't a product — an ingredient, a routine step, a quiz question, a bundle rule — and themes read the entries at render time.

Documented at https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/metaobjects.

How we've used it

Metaobjects are where a reusable thing lives when it isn't a product. One ingredient entry — name, art, sourcing copy — is authored once and referenced by every product that contains it, so a wording change lands everywhere at once. The same shape carries routine steps that one section renders four different ways, customer-result photos with their handles and captions, and a comparison limit set per collection. The larger builds go further and treat metaobjects as configuration rather than content: a multi-step quiz keeps its questions, options and selection rules as entries, and a bundle builder keeps its per-category pick caps and reserved gift slot there. The section becomes a renderer for data the merchandiser owns.

Builds using it

4 further gated builds use it; their pages follow.

Related entities

Metafields · Dynamic sources · Theme blocks · JSON templates

Builds

A second product template whose add-to-bag switches between one cart line and several

`main-product-bundle.liquid` is a fork of the theme's product section in which one Liquid conditional wraps the buy form in either a standard `<product-form>` or a `<bundle-product-form>`, depending on which bundle metafield the product carries.

Nudestix

Main collection grid: merchandisable promo tiles, load-more and a filter blocklist

Dawn's collection grid extended in four directions: promo tiles a merchandiser places by grid position, a textarea that suppresses unwanted filter values, load-more over the Section Rendering API, and an infinite-scroll fallback.

Nudestix

Curl Quiz 3.0: a nine-step diagnostic quiz rendered entirely from Shopify metaobjects

A nine-step hair diagnostic on the LUS Brands storefront whose questions, options and selection rules live in Shopify metaobjects rather than in the section's code. The theme editor exposes exactly one setting.

LUS Brands

Four selectable How-To step layouts from a single metaobject step list

One list of `how_to_use` step metaobjects renders as a card grid, a slider, a numbered timeline or an image-and-text split, chosen per product, with a desktop and a mobile asset per step and video that plays only while in view.

LUS Brands

Variant-aware PDP hero banner driven by a 'heroic' metaobject

An editorial hero below the buy box that resolves its art, headline and copy from a per-variant metaobject, and refetches its own content through the Section Rendering API when the shopper switches variant.

LUS Brands

Metafield-driven PDP content system: auto-built accordions, need-to-know strip and campaign widgets

A layered content resolver on the Nudestix product page: legacy description HTML parsed into accordions at render time, three of them overridden per shade from metafields, with icon strips, badges and campaign widgets assembled from 29 metafield keys around them.

Nudestix

Product card with award badges, per-variant content payload and per-card structured data

One snippet renders the whole Nudestix grid card: tag and award badges, quick view, wishlist, comparison, an in-grid add to bag, and a per-variant data payload the shade switcher reads without a fetch.

Nudestix

Side-by-side product comparison drawer and modal table

A compare-products flow with no app behind it: card checkboxes write the selection to localStorage, a drawer pinned to the bottom of the viewport carries it from collection to product page and back, and the modal table fetches each product's long-form copy from that product's own page section at the moment the shopper asks to compare.

Nudestix

Metafield-driven product information tabs with mobile accordion and variant refresh

How To, Ingredients, FAQs and Tips render below the buy box from metafields — as tabs on desktop, as a native accordion on mobile, and re-resolved from the server every time a shopper picks a different variant.

LUS Brands

Quiz results: a 34-rule, priority-ordered recommendation engine running client-side from metaobject data

The half of the Curl Quiz that turns answers into products. Liquid renders every possible recommendation once into hidden templates; a matcher in the browser runs 34 priority-ordered rules and clones the survivors into three result groups.

LUS Brands

Shade swatch rendering and per-variant content payload

The swatches are the visible half. The other half is a hidden input per variant carrying that shade's copy, ingredients, SEO fields and badges — a data contract three separate features read without asking the server anything.

Nudestix

Shade-level collection grid hydrated from an external faceting service

A Shopify collection template that lists shades instead of products: the section renders an empty grid shell, then builds every card, facet and count in the browser from a bespoke faceting service outside the theme.

Nudestix