Types

Liquid objects can be one of six types:

• String

• Number

• Boolean

• Nil

• Array

• EmptyDrop

You can initialize Liquid variables using assign or capture tags.

String

Strings are sequences of characters wrapped in single or double quotes:

{% assign my_string = "Hello World!" %}

Liquid does not convert escape sequences into special characters.

Number

Numbers include floats and integers:

{% assign my_int = 25 %}
{% assign my_float = -39.756 %}

Boolean

Booleans are either true or false. No quotations are necessary when declaring a boolean:

{% assign foo = true %}
{% assign bar = false %}

Nil

Nil is a special empty value that is returned when Liquid code has no results. It is not a string with the characters “nil”.

Nil is treated as false in the conditions of if blocks and other Liquid tags that check the truthfulness of a statement.

In the following example, if the user does not exist (that is, user returns nil), Liquid will not print the greeting:

{% if user %}
  Hello {{ user.name }}!
{% endif %}

Tags or outputs that return nil will not print anything to the page.

Input

The current user is {{ user.name }}

Output

The current user is

Array

Arrays hold lists of variables of any type.

Accessing items in arrays

To access all the items in an array, you can loop through each item in the array using an iteration tag.

Input

<!-- if site.users = "Tobi", "Laura", "Tetsuro", "Adam" -->
{% for user in site.users %}
  {{ user }}
{% endfor %}

Output

  Tobi Laura Tetsuro Adam

Accessing specific items in arrays

You can use square bracket [ ] notation to access a specific item in an array. Array indexing starts at zero. A negative index will count from the end of the array.

Input

<!-- if site.users = "Tobi", "Laura", "Tetsuro", "Adam" -->
{{ site.users[0] }}
{{ site.users[1] }}
{{ site.users[-1] }}

Output

Tobi
Laura
Adam

Initializing arrays

You cannot initialize arrays using only Liquid.

You can, however, use the split filter to break a string into an array of substrings.

EmptyDrop

An EmptyDrop object is returned if you try to access a deleted object. In the example below, page_1, page_2 and page_3 are all EmptyDrop objects:

{% assign variable = "hello" %}
{% assign page_1 = pages[variable] %}
{% assign page_2 = pages["does-not-exist"] %}
{% assign page_3 = pages.this-handle-does-not-exist %}

Checking for emptiness

You can check to see if an object exists or not before you access any of its attributes.

{% unless pages == empty %}
  <h1>{{ pages.frontpage.title }}</h1>
  <div>{{ pages.frontpage.content }}</div>
{% endunless %}

Both empty strings and empty arrays will return true if checked for equivalence with empty.