Edit your Shopify theme locally
The Shopify theme gem is a command line tool that lets you make live changes to themes on your Shopify store. If the command line is scary, check out the Desktop Theme Editor app.
It will watch your local folders for any changes in your theme (including adding and removing files) and will update your .myshopify.com store to the latest changes.
You do not need to make changes to your default theme. You can leverage the theme preview feature of Shopify that allows you to view what an unpublished theme looks like on your Shopify store. This means you don't need to sign up for extra accounts and keep your shop up to date. You will however have a blue bar that shows up that you can remove via the web inspector in Chrome or Safari.
Requirements
This gem works with OS X or Windows with Ruby 1.9.
First time installing Ruby on windows? Try Rubyinstaller.
Installation
To install the shopify_theme gem use 'gem install' (you might have use 'sudo gem install')
gem install shopify_theme [optional_theme_id]
to update to the latest version
gem update shopify_theme
Usage
Generate the config file. Go get a valid api_key and password for your store head to https://[your store].myshopify.com/admin/apps/private
and generate a private application. By default it adds the main theme, if you want to edit one of your other themes, add the theme_id
.
theme configure api_key password store_url
Example of config.yml. Notice store has no http or https declaration. You can
use :whitelist_files:
to specify files for upload. The assets/
, config/
,
layout/
, snippets/
, templates/
and locales/
directories are included by
default.
You can also use :ignore_files:
to exclude files from getting uploaded, for
example your config/settings.html
or other configuration driven items
---
:api_key: 7a8da86d3dd730b67a357dedabaac5d6
:password: 552338ce0d3aba7fc501dcf99bc57a81
:store: little-plastics.myshopify.com
:theme_id:
:whitelist_files:
- directoryToUpload/
- importantFile.txt
:ignore_files:
- config/settings.html
Download all the theme files
theme download
Upload a theme file
theme upload assets/layout.liquid
Remove a theme file
theme remove assets/layout.liquid
Completely replace shop theme assets with the local assets
theme replace
Watch the theme directory and upload any files as they change
theme watch
Open the store in the default browser
theme open
Bootstrap a new theme with Timber
# use latest stable
theme bootstrap api_key password shop_name theme_name
# use latest build
theme bootstrap api_key password shop_name theme_name master
Common Problems
SSL Certificates won't verify on Windows
If you are experiencing SSL validation errors, it is most likely because your installation does not have any valid certificates. This can be taken care of by downloading a certificate file and setting a the SSL_CERT_PATH environment variable on your system. For more details check out the following gist.
See the following issue for more details
How do I edit a theme that isn't my shops main theme?
This can be done by setting the theme_id
field in config.yml
which was created when you
ran theme configure
. Your file should look like the following:
---
:api_key: 7a8da86d3dd730b67a357dedabaac5d6
:password: 552338ce0d3aba7fc501dcf99bc57a81
:store: little-plastics.myshopify.com
:theme_id: 0987654321
Where can I find my Theme Id?
Currently the best way to find the id of the theme you want to edit is to go to the theme in your shops admin and grab it from the url.