I’m developing a Shopify theme and I need to include a snippet file, but only if it is available in the snippets directory. Currently, I encounter errors when I try to include files that are not created yet.
Here’s the code I’m using:
{% render 'my-custom-snippet' %}
When the file isn’t present, I receive this error:
Liquid error: Could not find asset snippets/my-custom-snippet.liquid
I have a background process that generates these snippet files automatically, which means they may not always be available when the page is loading. How can I verify the existence of the snippet file before attempting to render it? I want to prevent the error and just not include the snippet if it’s missing.
I ran into this exact issue when building dynamic themes. The cleanest approach I found was using a conditional check with liquid variables. Set up a template variable at the top of your main template file that tracks which snippets should be available, then reference that before rendering. Something like {% if snippet_enabled %}{% render 'my-custom-snippet' %}{% endif %}. You can have your background process update this variable alongside creating the actual snippet files. This way you avoid the liquid error entirely and maintain better control over when snippets get included. Much more reliable than trying to catch errors after they happen.
unfortunatly liquid doesnt have a built-in way to check if snippets exist before rendering them. workaround i use is wrapping the render in a capture block and checking for errors, but thats messy. better solution might be having your background process create empty placeholder files first?