Get Current URL

[gina-gregory]

I have yet to see a way to get the current page URL as seen in the address bar with liquid. Did I miss something?
Would it be complicated to add another global variable, similar to {{ page_title }}, to get the current page URL, including any query strings?
Thanks!

[fw42]

Liquid does not know anything about URLs or address bars or websites and such...

Are you using Jekyll?

[gina-gregory]

I guess that's why I haven't seen a solution for that yet!

I'm just working within Shopify.

[rickydazla]

@gina3five @fw42 Shopify does know about some URLs that you might get some mileage from, depending what template you are on and what you are trying to do. All of the following will return URL-related value strings...

• shop.url
• shop.domain
• page.url
• collection.url
• product.url
• blog.url
• article.url
• article.comment_post_url

[gina-gregory]

Yep, I'm aware of those. There are a couple things I would like to check with liquid I can't get with those. For example, the URL of a hidden product. If someone tries to go to a product URL of a product that is hidden, you are shown the 404 page. Since you're on the 404 template, you don't have access to the product object.

Also, it would be neat to get the current URL as seen in the address bar so I can get any query string, such as the search type when on the search results page (/search?type=product&q=plates) or any other information I want to pass.

My knowledge of how liquid works is really limited, so sorry for asking a dumb question.

[Krossmaskinen]

@gina3five I was trying to find this as well. The solution I had to turn to was using JS document.URL instead. Not a very nice one, but it's the best I could do.

[srinathperera101]

Hi I was able to get this by
{% assign current_url = '' %}

{% case template %}
{% when 'page' %}
{% assign current_url = page.url %}
{% when 'blog' %}
{% assign current_url = blog.url %}
{% when 'article' %}
{% assign current_url = blog.url %}
{% when 'collection' %}
{% assign current_url = collection.url %}
{% when 'product' %}
{% assign current_url = product.url %}
{% endcase %}

[joe-dempsey]

There are times when you need to get more than the above liquid code will give as there are additional url parameters added at certain stages (e.g. purchasing then forced to log in, submitting email etc) - then you need to use javascript:

$(document).ready(function() {
//jquery
$(location).attr('href');

//pure javascript
var pathname = window.location.pathname;

});

[ajdinmore]

In case it's of use to anyone:

What Shopify does have, which may or may not help you, is the canonical_url variable/object. It doesn't technically give the current URL and definitely won't include any query parameters, but in a lot of cases it's probably going to have the needed information.

https://help.shopify.com/themes/liquid/objects#canonical_url

[1der1]

Shopify ignores the querystring part of requests. If you look at the source code of a Shopify page, you can even see that you get cached results for requests with another querystring.

Example:
You call https://myshop.com?123
The source code contains
"pageurl":"myshop.com?123"

Then you call https://myshop.com?1234
The source code may again contain
"pageurl":"myshop.com?123"

This behavior is server side and there is no way you can change this. If have seen feature requests for accessing the querystring for years.

I have given up hope, that this feature will ever come to Shopify.

I have learned, that in order to get the querystring into liquid code you have to use a proxy app.

A proxy app is installed on a non-Shopify server and is called with the full URI of the requested page. The proxy app can add Liquid code to be used in the Shopify server. This way the proxy app can inject the querystring information.

I have asked for a solution in the Shopify forum:
https://ecommerce.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussion/t/querystring-part-of-a-url-427478

I did not get feedback so far. However, I now found an old app
https://apps.shopify.com/querystring

This should help solve the problem as soon as it is updated to the current Shopify theme structure. I am currently in discussion with the App developer.

[1der1]

Unfortunately, this is the answer I got from Joe Bryan at www.sinelabs.com:
> ...there is only one path that this app works with and you can only configure it in the app proxy url screen. They have no /pages/ path because that is used for built-in pages. This app will not work for what you want. Please uninstall. Snippets and paths work the way they do in normal Shopify yes, but in a proxy app (and anyone can build one) it is different what can be rendered and at what path. The path you want to use will not work, never will work. It is not a limitation of our app but of what a proxy app can do by Shopify.

I have now made a feature request for Shopify:
Dear Shopify team,

What about an include directive for external HTML/Liquid code?
{% external %}
being on an external server page, which receives the Shopify page address (including the query string) and gives back Content-Type: application/liquid.

This way you could specify the position of the content within the Shopify page like you can do with the {% include %} directive. The content would just come dynamically from an external server instead of including a Shopify theme snippet.

This solution would be very powerful without compromising the Shopify architecture.

[strouptl]

Did you guys try request.path? I did not test to see if it includes the query string, but it works great for getting the current url. See https://help.shopify.com/themes/liquid/objects/request.

[1der1]

Yes, I tried everything. The query string is not existent for the Shopify server and cannot be used in Liquid.

Using non-documented page data sent by the server, you can hack the query string. Unfortunately, the Shopify server cache ignores the query string as well, and you can get the same page from the server, no matter what query string. E.g., even the hacked data in the page code are wrong and useless then.

Ignoring the query string entirely is the biggest Shopify weakness in my opinion.

I can understand the reasons and they are valid most of the time, but there should be a way to override it when it is required. For this reason, I have suggested the {% external %} solution which would not break anything else but support third-party developers a lot.

[qrcf]

Any updates on this issue?

[qrcf]

Want to use more advanced sorting such as size and need it to be in the query string but there appears to be no way to reliably get this. I don't want to be forced to make the collection page sort via javascript.