Metaobject Definitions

This page contains all the details of how to manage your Metaobject definitions in Accentuate.

Accentuate enables you to fully create and manage Metaobject definitions. In order to do so, click the Metaobject card on your dashboard when you open our app. It will lead you to the META page.

Here you can see some banners welcoming you to the page, and explaining that you should add your first Metaobject definition. So let's do just that!

Adding your first Metaobject definition

To add a Metaobject definition, first click the “Add Metaobject” button. This will open up a modal that requests you to fill out some basic settings of the Metaobject.

This will create the base Metaobject definition that you can then add fields onto. It's the fields themselves that hold the data you will input while this contains the settings of the Metaobject.

Adding fields to your definition

Great! With that done it's time to add some fields that will hold the data we want in this Metaobject. Accentuate supports ALL Shopify native types along with additional settings like if the field is required and validations for the field.

Pasting fields

If you want to reuse a field you have already set up somewhere else in your store you can go ahead and copy/paste it here instead of creating it from scratch again. Keep in mind that you can only use Shopify native field types for Metaobjects.

And there you go! You created your first Metaobject definition without a drop of sweat! Feel free to explore all the field types that we support and explore all the additional features Accentuate builds on top of Shopify’s infrastructure.

Quality of life improvements

We added a couple of options to make your life easier. Be sure to skim through this section, as some of these options are quite beneficial but may have gone unnoticed.

Convert existing global Metafield sections into Metaobject definitions

Before Metaobjects existed in order to have data available globally you had to have shop or global Metafields set up. Accentuate offered a neat solution with repeatable global sections. That way you could organise data into sections and use that as a template for your global data. That is EXACTLY what Metaobjects do, so we decided to automate the process for our merchants if they want to switch over to using the Shopify native variant. Just click the magic wand button on your shop / global section and we will transform the Accentuate native types into matching Shopify types without you needing to worry.

Please keep in mind while using this feature that Accentuate offers some features that Shopify still does not have so converting fields into their Shopify native variants may not be perfect.

Liquid code templates

Accentuate generates handy liquid code templates so you can easily integrate your Metaobjects into your storefront.

Editing one Metaobject definition at a time

By default, Accentuate displays all your definitions and their fields. You can click the select definition button to display only one definition so you can focus on it and make sure you don’t accidentally modify an unrelated definition.

Exporting instances of one definition

Our Import/Export is a great feature that helps many merchants update their data in bulk or transfer data between stores with ease. You can do so with Metaobjects as well. If you would like to learn more about it, click on the Import custom field values guide here.

Directly going to create a new instance

We've implemented a button that directly leads you to add a new instance in the editor, making the process more efficient for you.

Instance naming

By default, Shopify uses the value of the first field in your Metaobject definition as the display name for that instance. A lot of the time this leads to unhelpful and repetitive names. Accentuate solves this issue with a checkbox that adds a single-line text field on the top of your definition that will only appear in the editor. This way you can control the display name of your instances and know your way around your data.

Copy-pasting definitions across stores

This is handy if you are setting up a second store and want to transfer a Metaobject definition to the new store, or even if you just want to create another definition with the same properties as your existing one on your store.

Save and sync across stores

The logical evolution of the copy button. This allows you to overwrite definitions on a linked store. However, be careful as this may result in a loss of data. We have a guide that goes into more detail regarding this feature.