Hide custom field date after it is in the past

[racso]

Hi,

Hope you guys can help me. I use a custom liquid on all product pages.

{% elsif product.metafields.custom.expected_date != blank %}
<p style="color: #ff9f0f;">Expected on stock date: {{ product.metafields.custom.expected_date | date: '%d-%m-%Y' }}

This works nicely but I want to hide this when the date is in the past. 

I have tried the following code but that does not work.

{% assign today_date = 'now' | date: '%s' %}
{% assign pre_date = product.metafields.custom.expected_date | date: '%s' %}
{% elsif product.metafields.custom.expected_date != blank and today_date < pre_date %}

<p style="color: #ff9f0f;">Expected on stock date:: {{ product.metafields.custom.expected_date | date: '%d-%m-%Y' }}</p>
{% endif %}

Any ideas on how to get this working?

Thanks!

[PaulNewton · Accepted solution]

Pages are cached on shopify so even if the comparison was working when you check it today the values being compared would never change in many instances of the page being served so in the future the stale values are what's compared.

If can be a bit more reliable using shopify-flow , such as with a schedule trigger , to toggle a metafield for the display;  which should trigger a cache update,  rather than try to rely on dates being cached. 

Alternatively use javascript and check the time with an external time service (don't trust the users browser time/date)

As for finding any issues in liquid code itself, sanity check assumptions and just raw output everything being used:

{% assign today_date = 'now' | date: '%s' %}
today_date : {{ today_date }}<br>
{% assign pre_date = product.metafields.custom.expected_date | date: '%s' %}
pre_date  : {{ pre_date }}<br>
{% if today_date < pre_date %}
 it's expected
{% else %}
 it's arrived
{% endif %}

[racso]

Thanks @PaulNewton , that explains it then. 🙏

[PaulNewton]

Notes for inventory date behaviors in shopify-flow,

• Two new inventory triggers were recently added to flow which are probably preferable to tinkering with the ScheduleAt trigger

  1. Product variant back in stock

  2. Product variant out of stock

• The get-product-data action has a 100 item limit.
• Any scheduledAt trigger in shopify-flow will be pretty dumb, as there is no complementary  action to create new schedules dynamically.
• There is no shopifys transfers api, nor is the transfers system exposed in  shopify-flow as either triggers or actions.
• Nor is there a metafield-was-updated action
• Flow has it's own forum https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-flow-app/bd-p/flow 

Good Hunting.