Theme app block extension script naming collision

[Ivan13]

We have developed several applications that utilize theme app block extensions. Across all of our apps, we've employed the same naming convention for our JavaScript files: "widget.js":

"target": "section",
"javascript": "widget.js",
"settings": [
...

Recently, we've observed that when multiple app blocks from different applications are added to a single page, only one app block is being displayed. After some analysis, we suspect that this issue might be arising due to a collision in script names (since all of our JavaScript scripts are named "widget.js").

Is this issue a result of a bug within Shopify, or should we consider implementing unique script naming as a measure to prevent naming collisions with both our own apps and those developed by other Shopify developers?

[Liam]

Hi Ivan13,

I believe there are some measures that Shopify has to prevent script collisions, but even still it's best practice to prefix the script name with the app name or a unique identifier related to your app. For example, instead of `widget.js`, you could use `yourAppName_widget.js`. This not only prevents conflicts with other app's JS files, but also can help other developers or merchants when troubleshooting issues if it's clear which JS file is associated with your app. 

Another good practice is namespacing your JavaScript functions and variables so that that even if the script names are unique, the functions and variables within them don't collide with others. There's more info on this approach in this forum post. 

Hope this helps!

[Ivan13]

thanks, good point