Cart - Prevent orders for out-of-stock items

[TyW]

Caution

This is an advanced tutorial and is not supported by Shopify. Knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Liquid is required. Consider hiring a Shopify Expert if you aren't comfortable doing the steps in the tutorial.

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Shopify lets you edit the quantities on the cart page to whatever value the customer would like regardless of if the product is in stock. Even when clicking on the Update button, customers still get what they asked for — not what they can actually purchase.

It's only during checkout that customers get a reality check as to what's in stock:

 

Silently correct quantities on the cart page

Caution: You can only add quantity correction to your cart page at /cart. Quantity correction will not work in a cart drawer or cart popup. You must disable any cart drawer or popup in your theme if you want to add silent quantity correction to your cart.

With the silent correction option, the default quantity value will return the absolute maximum a customer could purchase. For example, let's say you have a product called "Unicorn t-shirt" and the Unicorn t-shirt has only 10 in stock. When a customer tries to purchase 20 Unicorn t-shirts, the cart page will default to 10 under the quantity column. It will not allow the customer to purchase more Unicorn t-shirts.

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
2. Find the theme you want to edit, and then click Actions > Edit code.
3. Under the Templates folder, locate and click on cart.liquid to open it in the online code editor.
4. At the bottom of the cart.liquid file, add the following:
   
   

   <script>
   jQuery('[max]').change(function() {
     var max = parseInt(jQuery(this).attr('max'), 10) || 10000;
     var value = parseInt(jQuery(this).val(), 10) || 0;
     if (value > max) { jQuery(this).val(max); }
   });
   </script>

5. In the same file, locate the following:
   
   

   value="{{ item.quantity }}"

6. After value="{{ item.quantity }}", add the following:
   
   

   {% unless item.variant.inventory_management == blank or item.variant.inventory_policy == 'continue' %} max="{{ item.variant.inventory_quantity }}" {% endunless %}

   In the end, it should look like this:
   
   

   <input type="text" ... name="updates[]" id="updates_{{ item.id }}" value="{{ item.quantity }}" {% unless item.variant.inventory_management == blank or item.variant.inventory_policy == 'continue' %} max="{{ item.variant.inventory_quantity }}" {% endunless %} />

7. Click Save to confirm your changes to the file.

 

Tell customers when products are out of stock

If you prefer to throw an alert, and not just fix quantities silently, you can use this JavaScript solution instead of the one above.

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
2. Find the theme you want to edit, and then click Actions > Edit code.
3. Under the Templates folder, locate and click on cart.liquid to open it in the online code editor.
4. At the bottom of the cart.liquid file, add the following:
   
   

   <script>
   jQuery('[max]').change(function() {
     var max = parseInt(jQuery(this).attr('max'), 10) || 10000;
     var value = parseInt(jQuery(this).val(), 10) || 0;
     if (value > max) {
       alert('We only have ' + max + ' of this item in stock');
       jQuery(this).val(max);
     }
   });
   </script>

5. In the same file, locate the following:
   
   

   value="{{ item.quantity }}"

6. After value="{{ item.quantity }}", add the following:
   
   

   {% unless item.variant.inventory_management == blank or item.variant.inventory_policy == 'continue' %} max="{{ item.variant.inventory_quantity }}" {% endunless %}

   In the end, it should look like this:
   
   

   <input type="text" ... name="updates[]" id="updates_{{ item.id }}" value="{{ item.quantity }}" {% unless item.variant.inventory_management == blank or item.variant.inventory_policy == 'continue' %} max="{{ item.variant.inventory_quantity }}" {% endunless %} />

7. Click Save to confirm your changes to the file.

[jkcdee]

I opened the template cart.liquid as suggested, but there is a note that states:

"The contents of the cart.liquid template can be found in /sections/cart-template.liquid". 

Does this mean that the script should be added on Template > Sections > cart-template.liquid? 

[JRT]

Can this message work for a product that is set to sell into negative? It would be nice to have the "sell into negative" setting on a product for non-web sales channels, yet have the out of stock messaging  (shown in your tutorial) prevent the purchase of out-of-stock items on the web. 

[thibaut_co]

Hi, 

I've tried your code but every time I change the quantity of an other product from my cart summary, the {{ item.quantity }} change too and become not relative with my item... I guess it's because of Ajax... Do you have a solution for that ?

Thanks :) 

[gclass]

5. In the same file, locate the following:

Where is this file?

After following the first step, the code looks like this:

{% comment %}
The contents of the cart.liquid template can be found in /sections/cart-template.liquid
{% endcomment %}

{% section 'cart-template' %}

<script>
jQuery('[max]').change(function() {
var max = parseInt(jQuery(this).attr('max'), 10) || 10000;
var value = parseInt(jQuery(this).val(), 10) || 0;
if (value > max) { jQuery(this).val(max); }
});
</script>