You should consider the 'key' attribute to be the primary unique name of the metafield. The 'key' can be really any text value of between 3 and 64 characters in length. Regarding the 'namespace' attribute, a little more explaining is necessary. Because metafields were created by Shopify mainly for developer use, the 'namespace' attribute was provided to help prevent naming conflicts across multiple developers. For your purposes, think of the namespace attribute as a way to group similar or related metafields together. But if you are only using a few metafields, it's perfectly fine if you use the same namespace value for all of them. You can choose any text you want as long as it is between 3 and 255 characters in length. We do recommend that you do not include spaces in your namespace or key as it makes it more difficult to use them in Liquid theme templates. If in doubt and you would like a suggestion, just enter the word 'local' for the namespace value when you are configuring your own metafields in our app. Then when you want to display a metafield in one of your store's templates, the naming convention would be something like ...

{{ shop.metafields.local.mykeyname }}
or
{{ product.metafields.local.anotherkeyname }}

No. The import process is generally non-destructive in that it will only create or update the metafield values that are contained in the CSV file. It will not delete any of your other metafield data, with one exception. If you want to force a metafield value to be deleted during the import, use the literal string value '[BLANK]' (without the quote marks) and this will signal to the import that you want to force the value to be deleted or blanked out. Please be aware though that because the Shopify API does not allow a metafield to be saved with an empty or blank value, the app will actually delete that individual metafield instance entirely. This shouldn't be a problem or affect you in anyway really, the app handles all this behind the scenes for you. If, however, you are also using the Shopify API to retrieve your metafield data, bear in mind that a metafield with an empty/blank value in the Metafields2 app means the metafield actually does not exist for that individual resource.

If you want to globally delete a metafield, a simpler way to do so would be in the appropriate 'Config' tab in the app's interface. If the metafield contains data, you will be prompted for a specific typed confirmation response to proceed so it would be difficult to accidentally wipe out all the data for a single metafield.

Because metafields have been around for a couple of years and used by numerous developers and third-party apps, you may already have existing metafields in your store which are imported during the initial sync (and subsequent) process. Some power users really like having full control over all the metafields that exist in their store, including those added by other apps or developers. But for most users, it is distracting to see those other metafields mixed in with the metafields you yourself create in the app's interface when editing metafield data or in exported CSV files. So for this reason, the show and hide feature was added. Hiding a metafield simply hides it from the values editing screens and export files in the Metafields2 app only, it does not remove any data or hide the metafields in your Shopify store whatsoever. To put it another way, these hidden metafields will continue to work and be used by your other apps and in your templates normally, hiding them has no impact on them use outside of the Metafields2 app.

The Metafields2 app is NOT specifically an SEO app enabling meta tags. Although the name metafields might make you think of meta tags at first, the resemblance is entirely coincidental. Its name is simply the same name Shopify gave this 'extra fields' feature. The Shopify documentation for metafields is also helpful to fully read and understand. With that said, you can certainly use this app for meta tags or any other 'extra' data you want to attach to Shopify resources for SEO purposes, but its utility is much, much broader and the use cases are really limitless.

The fastest way to see the format is to generate a template using the Metafields2 app's export utility. First, create your metafields in the configure tab of any/all resources desired if they don't already exist. Then in the Utilities view of the app (click the gear icon in the header), run an Export job selecting the desired resources. Once this finishes you can download and view the export.csv file it creates as a ready-made CSV template for your use to edit with values and then import.

This is possible and a popular usage of our app. If you are not seeing the Google shopping metafields displaying in your Metafields2 app screens to edit or import/export, a few simple steps are needed. First an explanation - metafields are a Shopify feature (albeit under the covers) and a limitation of metafields that we cannot override is that they cannot contain a blank value. This means that until you add values for the four Google shopping metafields for at least one product, our app cannot see them. This is true even if you can see them in your Shopify dashboard when editing products.

If you have installed Shopify's Google shopping feeds app and you don't see the metafields in our app after all sync jobs have finished, simply go to one of your products in your Shopify dashboard, enter values for all four of the Google shopping metafields and click Save. Then click the apps button (three dots or ellipsis) in the toolbar and choose "Metafields2 App - Products." This will load our app and sync the four metafields for all your products at once. From this point forward you should be able to add/edit these values as you would expect, including export and import via CSV in the utilities screen of our app, accessible by clicking the gear icon in the navigation bar at the top of the screen.