Accentuate Custom Fields
  • Welcome!
  • Introduction
    • Getting started with ACF
    • Field scopes
    • How to show fields in your storefront
  • Dashboard
    • Reference Manager
      • Creating a new reference within Reference Manager
    • Filter & Group
      • Filter editor
      • Filter usage
    • Activity log
    • App settings
  • Field Definitions
    • Fields & Sections
    • Deciding on a field type
    • ACF Field types
      • Text
      • Markdown text
      • HTML
      • Checkbox
      • Selection
      • Tags
      • Number
      • Date
      • Color
      • Media v1 (legacy)
      • Media v2
      • Custom Object (JSON)
      • Multi-language Text
      • Reference fields
      • References to Global fields
    • Shopify Field types
      • Shopify » Single line text
      • Shopify » Multi-line text
      • Shopify » Boolean
      • Shopify » Color
      • Shopify » Custom objects (JSON)
      • Shopify » URL
      • Shopify » Date
      • Shopify » Date and Time
      • Shopify » Integer
      • Shopify » Decimal
      • Shopify » Weight
      • Shopify » Volume
      • Shopify » Dimensions
      • Shopify » Reference fields
    • Automatic tagging
    • Large sets
    • Field contexts
    • Field context filters
    • Copy and paste fields
    • Change field name and type
    • Import existing fields
    • Linking multiple stores
  • The Editor
    • Using the editor
    • Promote fields to sidebar
    • Layouts
    • Hide from search
    • Repeatable fields
    • Version control
    • Update value on order creation
  • Bulk Import & Export
    • Export custom field values
    • Import custom field values
    • Metaobject export / import
  • METAOBJECTS
    • What are Metaobjects?
    • Metaobject Definitions
    • Metaobject instances / values
    • Displaying Metaobjects on your storefront
    • Metaobject export / import
  • THEME EXTENSIONS
    • SEO keywords
    • Sticky promo bar
    • Products promotion
  • Liquid Guides
    • Learning Liquid
    • Resize & crop images
    • Check for empty values
    • Access field definitions
    • Order notifications
    • Allow customers to change their field values
  • OTHER
    • Webhooks
    • API
      • Access to custom fields
      • Endpoints
  • Help
    • FAQ
      • Why are one of my products no longer showing in my reference field?
      • I have multiple products/variants with the same name
      • How do I make changes to my field values in bulk?
      • I added a new field definition but it is not showing in my storefront
      • How do I copy my field setup to another store?
      • My fields are still showing after I have deleted their field definition
      • Why are none of my fields showing in the editor?
      • My newly created object in Shopify is not available in ACF
      • Reference lists are empty?
      • Why am I seeing a "value cannot exceed 100,000 characters" error when saving?
      • Why can't I name my field "first", "last" or "size"?
    • Need help?
  • Product
    • Changelog
    • Feedback & Suggestions
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On this page
  • What is a custom field?
  • How do I create a custom field in ACF?
  • What is a namespace?
  1. Introduction

Getting started with ACF

What is a custom field?

A custom field is a placeholder for data, you cannot fit it into Shopify's existing fields for pages, products, collections, etc. available in your Shopify admin detail pages. Typical custom fields are extra product description fields such as origin details, materials, ingredients, and care instructions as well as fields for holding specific information in your area of business, such as product retail prices, specifications, dimensions, weight, etc. You can also create extra fields to control your design layouts such as creating linked products, custom product filters, hiding specific products or articles from searches, or call-to-action text on buttons.

How do I create a custom field in ACF?

In ACF, you start by defining your field for the relevant type of object (for example a product, a collection, a page, etc). A field definition is needed to tell ACF the type of data the field is supposed to hold - a text, a number, a reference to (another) product, an image, or whatever you need - so when you edit your custom fields for e.g. a specific page, the ACF editor knows how to present your input field (including a title and instructions for the intended use) and accept new values being inputted.

Any number of custom fields can be defined. While there is no set upper limit, there certainly is a practical upper limit if the field list gets very long and as a result hard to manage.

Once a field definition has been created for a certain scope (e.g. products), you can use the ACF editor to enter values for this field for each of your products. You can launch the editor from the list of field definitions using the "Edit values" button but for some object types (like products and pages), you can also launch the editor from Shopify's admin pages. Look for the More actions dropdown near the top of the page and then choose Custom Fields.

What is a namespace?

Namespaces - together with keys - are an integral part of Shopify metafields and are therefore used as a mechanism for defining ACF custom fields, that ultimately will end up as Shopify metafields. Namespaces can be used to ensure one app's metafields won’t clash with other apps’ metafields e.g. Shopify Reviews, which uses a namespace of "spr". Using the default Accentuate namespace will ensure you are defining a separate set of Metafields, but you can always override this on a field-by-field basis if you like. It is also a great way to (technically) group sets of fields that naturally belong together. If you for example need to have two fields, "title" and "rating" for videos, you could opt for grouping them under the namespace "video" giving you two fields called "video.title" and "video.rating". Then if you need the same two fields for an image, you could place these under the namespace "image" giving you "image.title" and "image.rating" that don't collide with the video fields. If you need to use ACF to manage Metafields created from other apps, you can match the namespace and key for the fields when defining the field type and ACF will automatically use any existing values going forward. Just take care to define a field type that makes sense with regard to any existing data.

Some namespaces are reserved for internal ACF use and cannot be used for field definitions. The field definition dialog will not allow you to define fields using the namespaces acf_settings, product_types, vendors, locations or globals

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Last updated 10 months ago