Truthy and Falsy

Marc Staine

12-Aug-2024

In programming, we describe “truthy” and “falsy” as anything that returns true or false, respectively, when used inside an if statement.

What is truthy?

All values in Liquid are truthy, with the exception of nil and false.

In the example below, the text “Tobi” is not a boolean, but it is truthy in a conditional:

{% assign tobi = 'Tobi' %}
{% if tobi %}
This will always be true.
{% endif %}

Strings, even when empty, are truthy. The example below will result in empty HTML tags ifsettings.fp_heading is empty:

Input

{% if settings.fp_heading %}
<h1>{{ settings.fp_heading }}</h1>
{% endif %}

Output

<h1></h1>

To avoid this, you can check to see if the string is blank, as follows:

{% unless settings.fp_heading == blank %}
 <h1>{{ settings.fp_heading }}</h1>
{% endunless %}

An EmptyDrop is also truthy. In the example below, if settings.page is an empty string or set to a hidden or deleted object, you will end up with an EmptyDrop. The result is an undesirable empty

{% if pages[settings.page] %}
<div>{{ pages[settings.page].content }}</div>
{% endif %}

<div></div>

{% if collection.image %}
<!-- output collection image -->
{% endif %}