Create shopify notification emails with a combination of React and Liquid
You are building a headless ecommerce experience using shopify. Probably with Hydrogen, Remix, NextJS, etc.
You've built a set of composable components using React, however there is one critical piece that is missing: Email Notifications. Emails for Order confirmation, shipping, etc.
You'll need to use Shopify's Liquid
to build all of your email templates, which is a completely different developer experience than React.
We've build a set of components using React Email to help you create beautiful email templates. Helping consolidate the developer experience when creating headless shopify store.
In your project directory:
-
Install:
pnpm add react-email @react-email/components react-email-shopify-liquid -E
-
Create an
emails
folder at the top level of your project directory. -
Create a file named
OrderConfirmation.tsx
and paste the following:This template is from
examples/emails/OrderConfirmation.tsx
:import React from 'react'; import { Hr, Preview, Section, Text } from '@react-email/components'; import { EmailContainer, Greeting, OrderLineItems, OrderStatusLink, OrderTransactions, PaymentTerms, ShippingAddress, Subtotals } from 'react-email-shopify-liquid'; export const OrderConfirmation = () => ( <EmailContainer> <Preview>Order Confirmation</Preview> <Section> <Greeting /> <Text> Thank you for placing your order ({'{{ order.name }}'}). As soon as your order ships, you will receive a separate shipping confirmation email with tracking information. </Text> </Section> <Section className="mt-6"> <OrderStatusLink /> </Section> <Hr className="border-black my-10"></Hr> <OrderLineItems /> <Subtotals /> <Hr className="border-black my-10"></Hr> <PaymentTerms /> <OrderTransactions /> <ShippingAddress /> </EmailContainer> ); export default OrderConfirmation;
-
Add the following script to your
package.json
which will generate the email template html files"email:export": "email export && decode-entities"
This package includes a simple
decode-entities
bin script. React will encode things like quotes and>
,<
, which might be used within liquid expressins into html entites. Hence we need to decode those for liquid to render properly.Example:
Payment of {{ order.total_outstanding | money }} is due {{ due_date | date: format: 'date' }}
will becomePayment of {{ order.total_outstanding | money }} is due {{ due_date | date: format: 'date' }}
once decoded.
Decode entities advanced usage
-
If you have a more complex workflow, create your own script to handle decoding the html files.
#!/usr/bin/env node import { readFileSync, writeFileSync } from 'fs'; import path from 'path'; import { glob } from 'glob'; import { decode } from 'html-entities'; // React will encode quotes and etc that might be used within liquid expressions into entites. // Hence we need to decode those for liquid to render properly export const decodeEntities = () => { const generatedEmailPaths = glob.sync(path.join(process.cwd(), 'out', '**/*.html')) for (const emailPath of generatedEmailPaths) { const html = decode(readFileSync(emailPath, { 'encoding': 'utf-8' })); writeFileSync(emailPath, html, { encoding: 'utf-8' }); } }; decodeEntities();
-
Run the script
pnpm run email:export
. And look in the new folderout
that was created.- This command will create a new directory
out
at the root level of your project. All of the generated html files for your email templates will be placed here. See react-email documentation for more information on theemail export
command. The default source directory for your templates isemails
.
- This command will create a new directory
-
Let's preview the email template: Head over to the shopify admin page.
-
Click on the
Settings
⚙️ icon -
Select the
Notifications
menu item -
Click on the
Customer Notifications
menu item -
Select the
Order Confirmation
notification -
Hit the
Edit Code
button -
Paste the generated html from
OrderConfirmation.html
into the textarea -
Preview your changes and hit save.
Can I preview my email templates with react-email's
email:dev
script? Yes, but it won't be that helpful. Since the templates include liquid template syntax for retrieving like order details, line items, product information, we need these objects provided to us.Shopify's email template preview functionality will actually render your email template using the liquid template engine and provide all the relevant objects like
order
,product
, etc. Theemail:dev
script would just render the raw liquid syntax. -
That's it. Now, repeat for the rest of your email templates! Head over to
examples/emails
to see more templates.
-
You should either upload images to shopify as files, aws s3, or any other type of CDN.
-
Then use the CDN urls in the react-email
Image
component within the template.<Img src="https://some.cdn.com/image.png" width="76"/>
-
You should either upload your custom font to shopify as files, aws s3, or any other type of CDN.
-
Then use the CDN urls in the react-email
Font
component within the template. -
See the react-email docs on how to use the
Font
component.<Font fallbackFontFamily={['Helvetica']} fontFamily="MyCustomFont" webFont={{ url: 'https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/.../my-custom-font.woff2', format: 'woff2' }} fontWeight={400} fontStyle="normal"/>
If you take a look at the default shopify email templates available in shopify admin, you'll see there is a lot of logic involved. Not every single piece of logic is ported over to this package. If any custom logic is required, just create your own component using our provided Liquid
components. See the example templates for how this can be done.