Admin UI prevents creating two-way links between Shopify metaobjects (custom data records used in Online Store pages).
Behavior: If a metaobject already appears in “referenced by,” its checkbox can’t be selected to add a reciprocal reference, blocking bi-directional relationships. A linked video demonstrates this limitation.
Status: A Shopify representative confirmed this is a bug and has engaged the Custom Data product team to improve the experience to allow multiple references. No fix or timeline has been provided yet.
Workaround: The poster is temporarily looping through all metaobjects of a type and matching on a field to infer the inverse link, noting this may not scale.
Next steps: No updates so far; users are advised to monitor the public developer changelog (shopify.dev/changelog).
Resolution: Unresolved and open pending a platform fix.
I doing some work on a client store, where I’m creating some new metaobjects, to take advantage of the new online store pages for them (which is great!).
However I have two metaobjects that I want to link bi-directionally, but the admin UI doesn’t seem to allow me to select the second object if it is already referenced in the other direction.
Thanks for flagging this bug - I’ve connected with the custom data product team on this and they’;; work to improve this experience so that you can create multiple references like this.
Ok that’s cool, I’ll bench the work until the bug is fixed.
I have a short term workaround of looping through all of a type of meta object and checking for a field that matches, instead (which might not scale, but hopefully the bug is fixed by then).