How can I split a string by newline in Shopify?

Question

I have a field in my settings.html where I am expecting the user to input multiple paragraphs separated by two newline characters. I would like to split this string of input into an array of strings, each representing a paragraph.

I would like to do something like this:

{% assign paragraphs = settings.intro | split: '\n' %}
{% for paragraph in paragraphs %}
    <p>
        {{ paragraph }}
    </p>
{% endfor %}

I can't seem to figure out how to refer to the newline character in Liquid. How can I go about doing this? Is there some kind of work around?

score 42 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 29 '14 at 21:23

42

Try this:

{% assign paragraphs = settings.intro | newline_to_br | split: '<br />' %}
{% for paragraph in paragraphs %}<p>{{ paragraph }}</p>{% endfor %}

answered Dec 29 '14 at 21:23

Josh Brown

3,985
1
20
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19

Suggestion: add `strip_newlines` after `newline_to_br`. – Denilson Sá Maia Apr 26 '15 at 19:27
1

Why not just `split` by `\n` like this: `settings.intro | split: '\n'` ? – Nyasro Jan 07 '21 at 14:17
1

@Nyasro See answer of morganbaz : "Liquid does not convert escape sequences into special characters." But otherwise it works (see his answer). – Carlo Wood Apr 20 '23 at 13:33

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 29 '22 at 23:32

If you do, in fact, need Shopify to split by newlines for any reason where you don't iterate with a for loop afterwards, it is indeed possible:

{% assign paragraphs = settings.intro | split: '
' %}
{% for paragraph in paragraphs %}
    <p>
        {{ paragraph }}
    </p>
{% endfor %}

ie. you need to type an explicit newline into your source code.

This is due to the way Liquid works, quoting from the documentation about Types:

Liquid does not convert escape sequences into special characters.

OMG how crazy is that. It works, thanks a lot for the hint and great that you found out! — Cenco, May 15 '23 at 14:20

Craig.C · Answer 3 · 2020-11-10T11:20:24.133

@josh-browns answer got me pretty much there and might be enough for most instances. However, I had some blank paragraphs coming through from user generated double lines.

Denilson Sá Maia comment of strip_newlines did not help with my markdown processor so I checked if each line was empty manually before outputting the paragraph.

{% for paragraph in paragraphs %}
    {% assign paragraph-length = paragraph | number_of_words %}
    {% if paragraph-length > 0 %}
        <p>{{ paragraph }}</p>
        IMAGE HERE
    {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

This doesn't solve the blanks in the array, for that I iterated over the array to create a new one, with only valid content. It would be really nice if there was a filter that worked on arrays, not just hashes.

{% assign all-paragraphs = content  | strip | newline_to_br | strip_newlines | split: "<br />"  %}
{% assign paragraphs = site.emptyArray  %}
{% for paragraph in all-paragraphs %}
    {% if paragraph and paragraph != "" and paragraph != site.emptyArray %}
         {% assign paragraphs = paragraphs | push: paragraph %}
    {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

`newline_to_br` seems to apply only to a field which is a `textarea`. any way to apply this to a `richtext` component? — Fed, May 12 '22 at 08:40
I believe richtext settings already use `
` instead of new lines — Ferares, May 24 '22 at 12:27

How can I split a string by newline in Shopify?

3 Answers3