Mechanic
đŸ“Ŗ Shopify REST Deprecation
  • â›Šī¸Introduction
  • 🤓Hire a Mechanic developer
  • đŸ’¯status.mechanic.dev
  • đŸ“ŖShopify is deprecating the REST API
  • 🙋"I need something custom!"
  • 🧑‍đŸ’ģ"I need help with my custom task!"
  • 🤖"I need help with my AI-written task!"
  • Resources
    • âŦ‡ī¸Install Mechanic
    • 🧑‍đŸ’ģTask library
      • Contributing
      • Requesting
    • 🚀Slack community
    • 🤝Partner directory
    • 🧠Tutorials
      • Video walkthroughs
        • Auto-tag orders by originating staff member
        • Maintain a tag for orders processed today
        • Auto-tag orders with their tracking numbers
        • Sync inventory for shared SKUs
        • Auto-tag products when their SKU(s) change
        • Auto-publish new products
        • Email a report of customers who haven't ordered in X days
        • Upgrading a Mechanic task: Adding a time delay
        • Email the customer when tracking numbers are added to their order
        • Adding an optional time delay to your Mechanic task
        • Delete all orders
        • Send an email when a specific product is shipped
        • Send recurring reminders about unpaid orders
        • Send an email when a product's price goes below its cost
        • Auto-tag customers by sales channel
        • Creating products in bulk
      • Creating a Mechanic webhook
      • Practicing writing tasks
      • Triggering tasks from a contact form
      • Creating scheduled CSV feeds
      • Fetching data from a shared Google sheet
    • 🏆Converting tasks from Shopify REST to GraphQL
      • Conversion: Single resource lookups
      • Conversion: Resource loops to paginated queries
      • Conversion: Connections from a resource
      • Conversion: Metafield lookups from a resource
      • Conversion: Resource lookups in task option fields
  • Core Concepts
    • Events
      • Topics
      • Parent and child events
    • Tasks
      • Subscriptions
      • Code
        • Environment variables
        • Action objects
        • Error objects
        • Log objects
      • Options
        • Custom validation
      • Previews
        • Defining preview events
        • Stub data
      • Shopify API version
      • Advanced settings
        • Documentation
        • JavaScript
        • Perform action runs in sequence
      • Import and export
      • User Form
    • Actions
      • Cache
      • Echo
      • Email
      • Event
      • Files
      • Flow
      • FTP
      • Google Drive
      • Google Sheets
      • HTTP
      • Integrations
        • Report Toaster
      • Shopify
      • File generators
        • Base64
        • PDF
        • Plaintext
        • URL
        • ZIP
    • Runs
      • Scheduling
      • Concurrency
      • Ordering
      • Retries
    • Interacting with Shopify
      • Responding to events
        • Reconciling missing events
      • Reading data
        • âš ī¸Liquid objects
        • 🏆GraphQL in Liquid
        • Bulk operations
        • The Shopify action
      • Writing data
      • Shopify admin action links
      • API rate limit
      • API versions
  • Platform
    • 🔆Policies
      • Data
      • Plans
      • Pricing
      • Privacy
    • Cache
      • Cache endpoints
    • Email
      • Receiving email
      • Custom email addresses
      • DMARC
      • Email templates
    • Error handling
    • Events
      • Event topics
      • Event filters
    • GraphQL
      • Basics
        • Shopify Admin API GraphiQL explorer
        • Queries
        • Mutations
        • Pagination
      • Bulk operations
    • Integrations
      • Appstle Subscriptions
      • Google Drive and Google Sheets
      • Judge.me
      • Locksmith
      • Report Toaster
      • Shopify Flow
      • Run links
    • Liquid
      • Basics
        • Syntax
        • Data types
        • Variables
        • Comments
        • Filters
        • Operators
        • Control flow
          • Condition
          • Iteration
        • Whitespace
      • Liquid console
      • Mechanic filters
        • Deprecated filters
      • Mechanic keyword literals
        • array
        • hash
        • newline
      • Mechanic objects
        • Action object
        • Cache object
        • Event object
        • Options object
        • Task object
        • âš ī¸Shopify REST Admin API
          • đŸšĢArticle object
          • đŸšĢBlog object
          • đŸšĢCollection object
          • đŸšĢCustomer object
          • đŸšĢDiscount code object
          • đŸšĢDispute object
          • đŸšĢDraft order object
          • đŸšĢFulfillment object
          • đŸšĢFulfillment order object
          • đŸšĢFulfillment event object
          • đŸšĢGift card object
          • đŸšĢInventory item object
          • đŸšĢInventory level object
          • đŸšĢLine item object
          • đŸšĢLocation object
          • đŸšĢMetafields
            • Metafield object
            • Metafield representation object
            • Metafield collection object
          • đŸšĢOrder object
          • đŸšĢOrder risk object
          • đŸšĢPrice rule object
          • đŸšĢProduct object
          • đŸšĢProduct image object
          • đŸšĢRefund object
          • đŸšĢShipping zone object
          • đŸšĢShop object
          • đŸšĢTheme object
          • đŸšĢTheme asset object
          • đŸšĢTransaction object
          • đŸšĢVariant object
      • Mechanic tags
        • liquid
        • action
        • assign
        • error
        • log
      • Mechanic code snippets
    • Shopify
      • Custom authentication
      • "Read all orders"
    • Webhooks
  • Techniques
    • Preventing action loops
    • Writing a high-quality task
    • Tagging Shopify resources
    • Debouncing events
    • Responding to action results
    • Working with external APIs
      • JSON Web Signatures
      • AWS request signatures
    • Finding a resource ID
    • Migrating templates from Shopify to Mechanic
    • Securing Mechanic webhooks
    • Monitoring Mechanic
  • FAQ
    • The app isn't loading. What do I do?
    • How do I stop a large batch of runs?
    • A Shopify event is missing. Where is it?
    • Does Mechanic have an affiliate program?
    • Can non-owners install Mechanic?
    • Can I replace Shopify's order emails with Mechanic?
    • Can I manually set Shopify permissions for Mechanic?
    • Does my theme need to be updated for Mechanic?
    • Do you have a plan for development stores?
    • Why don't I see any events in my task's activity?
    • Can I read data back from my webhook submission?
    • My task added a tag, but now the tag is missing – why?
    • How do I add an unsubscribe link to my emails?
    • How do I send images with my emails?
    • Can I re-send order confirmation emails with Mechanic?
    • Why am I seeing a different price than on the app store?
    • Do you have a Partner-friendly plan?
    • Why are my tasks delayed or not running?
    • My task is failing because of a permissions problem. Why?
    • How do I preview email attachments?
    • Can I query external APIs?
    • Why can't I access the Shopify API during preview mode?
    • How do marketing preferences work with Mechanic?
    • Can I send data to Google Sheets?
    • What's possible with timeline comments?
    • I'm getting a "query param length is too long" error when using GraphQL.
    • Can my Mechanic concurrency limit be raised?
    • What IP address does Mechanic use?
    • Can Mechanic read or manage customer subscriptions?
    • Why is everything harder now?
    • Can task content be translated into multiple languages?
    • Can I add a time delay to my task?
    • Can I add another store to my existing Mechanic subscription?
    • How can I reduce memory usage of my task?
    • How do I connect PayPal to Shopify with Mechanic?
    • How do I add a Shopify access scope to my task?
    • Can I have my Mechanic data retained for more (or less) than 15 days?
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Important Updates

  • đŸ“Ŗ Shopify REST Deprecation
On this page
  • Maximum filesize
  • Object structure
  • Supported actions

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  1. Core Concepts
  2. Actions

File generators

PreviousShopifyNextBase64

Last updated 1 year ago

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File generators are invoked by to create new files, using options provided by the action, and handing the resulting file back to the action for further use. In this way, can make choices about what files to generate, and what to do with the results.

File generator

Purpose

Decodes base64-encoded content, returning a file containing the results

Renders HTML using a full Webkit browser, returning a PDF file of the results

Allows defining file contents using a plain string, instead of a file generator object

Downloads and returns a file

Accepts its own set of file generators, returning a ZIP archive of the results

Maximum filesize

Generated files may each be a maximum of 20MB.

"But why?", you may well ask!

Mechanic allows action run results to be fed back into the system (). File generators usually end up having their resulting files represented in the action run results, and base64-encoding 20mb of binary data makes for a lot of JSON. We have to draw a line somewhere.

Object structure

File generator objects, like , are plain JSON objects each having a single key, and a single value. The object key specifies which file generator is to be invoked; the object value contains the options used for that generator.

{
  FILE_GENERATOR_TYPE: FILE_GENERATOR_OPTIONS
}

In practice, file generator objects are given as values in a larger JSON object, in which filenames are mapped to file generators.

{% action "files" %}
  {
    "invoice.pdf": {
      "pdf": {
        "html": "<h1>Order #12345</h1>\n<p>It's due!</p>"
      }
    },
    "external.jpg": {
      "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Example.jpg"
    },
    "plain.txt": "This\nis\na\nmulti-line\nplaintext\nfile."
  }
{% endaction %}

Supported actions

These are the Mechanic actions that support file generators.

Action

Usage

Uses file generators to prepare email attachments

Uses file generators to prepare temporary URLs, from which the generated files can be downloaded

Uses file generators to prepare FTP uploads

Adds generated files to a multipart/form-data HTTP request

The file generator is invoked implicitly by supplying a string, instead of supplying the usual file generator object.

In the following example, a action is defined, mapping filenames ("invoice.pdf", "external.jpg", and plain.txt) to file generators (a PDF generator, a URL generator, and – implicitly – a plaintext generator). Note how the file generator invocation varies, based on the specific file generator in play.

🤷
actions
tasks
via mechanic/actions/perform
action objects
plaintext
Files
Base64
PDF
Plaintext
URL
ZIP
Email
Files
FTP
HTTP