Local customized theme's data not being saved in settings_data.json

[iRabi]

Issue summary

We can view the development them in http://127.0.0.1:9292/ and changes made in https://[sitename].myshopify.com/admin/themes/12345xxxxxx/editor are also reflected in http://127.0.0.1:9292/ once saved but the values are not being saved in settings_data.json

So, when 'shopify theme push' is executed in CLI no customized changes are uploaded in live theme.

Expected behavior

All changes that are saved and reflected in http://127.0.0.1:9292/ must be saved in settings_data.json and pushed to live site.

Actual behavior

Customized changes from editor are not being saved in local settings_data.json and when theme is pushed there is not any change visible in live site.

Steps to reproduce the problem

1. Serve the theme in localhost (CLI > 'shopify theme serve')
2. Customize theme in editor
3. Save, stop theme serve and push it in live (CLI > 'shopify theme push')

[princelauvaka]

After some investigation, it looks like the shopify theme serve is not really a 2 way sync.
So whatever gets saved in the customizer during your shopify theme serve is only saved online, this means you'll have to pull the theme to get the online changes to your local while your still in this serve.

Once you stop your serve, the online customizer data is gone,
but you'll have a copy of the online customize data if you have pulled it during the serve.

https://shopify.dev/themes/tools/cli/theme-commands#pull

[baronvertigovongrahamthesecondofsealand]

This is a problem and needs to be addressed.

[opium-opiumoo]

+1 on Windows

[rayymann]

+2 on Windows. Is there any fix on this? Otherwise, I'll use the theme kit instead.

[thatwebagency]

BUMP +1 this a million. After working on a theme it doesnt make sense to have to pull before you push, why cant local files stay in sync with remote?

[opium-opiumoo]

@macournoyer can someone please check this?

[macournoyer]

theme serve is indeed a one way sync for now. It will only upload your local files to the Online Store.

To clarify, what you want is to pull the changes made to config/settings_data.json in https://[sitename].myshopify.com/admin/themes/12345xxxxxx/editor, and override the local copy on disk?

Would that cover everyone's use case here?

[thatwebagency]

@macournoyer definitely would! usual flow would be a combination of theme customizer and visual studio code to complete the theme, at the end if we forget and then push the code to store we override any customizer settings we did.

i guess we either need to have an option to pull the settings data locally when finished or exclude that file from a push?

[iRabi]

@macournoyer, yes whatever we see in http://127.0.0.1:9292/ after customizing in https://[sitename].myshopify.com/admin/themes/12345xxxxxx/editor [development (draft)] section should be saved or pulled in local _settings_data.json.

And as @tomthatwebagency's suggestion it ll be better if we can have an option to save/pull the settings_data.json locally when finished and even better if some CLI command is provided to include/exclude that file to push into live theme.

[baronvertigovongrahamthesecondofsealand]

Yea, I think there needs to be a CLI option. If we enable overwrite by default, thats a significant change, but maybe a good one. So the question is, enable or disable this by default? Then have a CLI option to disable/enable it.

[1aurabrown]

I'm in the process of migrating my custom boilerplate theme to Online Store 2.0 for the first time, and I'm really not understanding how to develop a theme for a client, setting up all content for them as I build the site, and then hand over a store with a live theme, with all data in place. Every time I start up the development theme, I have to set up theme settings all over again. How can this be avoided? I'm still a little fuzzy on how all these new pieces of tooling fit together.

[macournoyer]

Here's an idea: #1708. It would add an option to pull changes made to the JSON in the Editor/Customize.
Would that improve the experience? Any edge case you can think of with this approach?