Activating Theme App extension block

Extensions
1

Hi,

I am writing a theme app extension which has some app blocks and I want to activate them on certain areas like above “Add to Cart” button in product template automatically. While I read that we can a provide a deep link to merchant to add the app block in theme editor to a section and save, I also see that apps automatically activate the app block without needing merchant to do anything. But I cant find any clear documentation or articles around it. Would somebody here know how that is done? Can you please share? Many thanks in advance.

2

I asked the .dev Assistant for this one and it suggests you can use the ThemeAppExtentionUpdate mutation to enable the app block on specific pages or sections of the theme.

https://shopify.dev/docs/api/admin-graphql/2024-10/mutations/themeAppExtensionUpdate

You may try asking it as well for a code example to test.

That said, I believe deep-linking is probably ideal so that the merchant can enable it themselves and check within the Theme Editor first rather than have live traffic automatically affected.

3

Thanks but that link is not working and when I search for themeAppExtensionUpdate. I dont see any result in the search as well

Screenshot 2024-10-25 at 11.00.55 AM
Screenshot 2024-10-25 at 11.00.55 AM1366×1220 118 KB

4

I think there can be better ways to do this especially if there are multiple app blocks.

For e.g. while activating app-embed, show all blocks in preview mode with easy on off toggle and then customer can edit or move them around and save vs customer going to your app, click on a deep link, edit, save and come back to app and click on another deep link etc.

5

Clicking deep links and adding the theme app extension is a hassle for merchants and results in poor UI/UX
I’ve seen some apps activate the theme app extension by default which puzzles me I thought they might be using the Assets API but I’m not convinced since it’s a theme app extension being added, not just modifications to theme files
I’m very interested in hearing if there’s a solution for this

6

I am also interested in this. I did not know there was a way to automatically turn on the app embeds

7

I can imagine some are possibly activated via the Assets API.

Just modifying the config/settings_data.json and adding to the "blocks" something like this:

"blocks": {
      "unique-app-handle": {
        "type": "shopify://apps/unique-app-handle/blocks/app-embed/unique-id",
        "disabled": false,
        "settings": {
        }
      }
    },

Replacing the “unique” bits with your own.

I am unsure if that would be enough to make it active but if so then that seems like it would be relatively easy to do…

9

Doing this may potentially enable App Embed… I understand app Embed cannot be activated automatically though and merchant needs to visit the app embed section to switch it on… but app blocks I have seen other apps activating automatically.

10

interesting. Thanks guys