A lot is manufactured from generative synthetic intelligence’s affect on search, content material, and processes, however it’s additionally a potent coding device that might assist ecommerce companies of all sizes.
Whereas they’ve but to remodel a novice right into a grasp programmer, ChatGPT and its opponents can produce useful code that entrepreneurs and retailers can paste into apps and automation workflows.
An instance could make the purpose.
Posting to Shopify Weblog
The content-then-commerce mannequin is massive enterprise. Content material attracts readers to transform into consumers. Nevertheless, Shopify retailers typically encounter an issue.
Whereas it excels at many issues, Shopify’s default weblog editor — suppose content material engine — lacks strong options.
As an illustration, a YouTube URL within the weblog editor produces nothing greater than textual content. It doesn’t robotically develop right into a video, requiring retailers to stick HTML for that objective.
In distinction, the identical YouTube URL within the WordPress.com editor ends in a responsive embedded video that shrinks and expands to match a customer’s display screen. That is the conduct most content material entrepreneurs count on.
The Shopify weblog editor requires customers to stick HTML for an embedded video.
An answer is bypassing the Shopify editor altogether. What if a marketer may compose content material in a device equivalent to Google Docs — with pictures, tables, and YouTube movies — after which auto-load it right into a Shopify weblog?
I prompted ChatGPT to generate the code for simply such an app.
The AI Resolution
ChatGPT’s resolution had two components.
Apps Script is accessible from any Google Doc and gives a improvement setting whereby Google software programming interfaces (APIs) can be found as companies. The code used is actually JavaScript.
Google Apps Script is a improvement setting accessible in Google Docs and different Google functions.
ChatGPT produced detailed code that could possibly be copied and pasted into the Apps Script’s setting, itemizing the method step-by-step.
ChatGPT’s Apps Script had six features.
- postArticleToShopify() — this was the first perform. It calls the supporting features and in the end connects to the Shopify API.
- convertBodyToHTML(physique) — given the doc physique, this perform does a lot of the work. It identifies if a selected ingredient within the doc physique is a bulleted checklist, a desk, or a paragraph. Paragraphs are difficult since they will include textual content, headings, pictures, or a hyperlink.
- extractYouTubeVideoId(url) — finds the YouTube ID in a URL string.
- generateYouTubeEmbed(videoId) — given a YouTube video ID, this perform builds a set of HTML tags that end in a responsive embedded video.
- formatCurrentDate() — is a helper perform that retrieves and codecs the present date into the publication date for the weblog put up.
- escapeHTML(textual content) — is a helper perform that removes a set of characters that might trigger issues when the HTML is distributed to Shopify’s API.
Essentially the most shocking a part of ChatGPT’s code era was its familiarity with the App Script and Shopify API necessities. ChatGPT knew that Shopify’s API couldn’t obtain a picture as a file however needed to be encoded and handed as information.
Customized Shopify App
There was one final step. In Shopify, I needed to navigate to the “Apps and gross sales channels” tab within the platform’s settings. From there, I created, approved, and put in a customized app. The aim was to gather an API entry token permitting the App Script to put up content material to the Shopify Weblog.
Creating the customized app offered entry to the API token.
Content material Posted
In lower than half-hour and ChatGPT’s code, I accomplished a working resolution to compose content material in a Google Doc and have it seem on Shopify.
ChatGPT’s code reworked a Google Doc into a whole weblog put up in Shopify.
The method is repeatable. Anybody may compose content material in Google Docs — with pictures, tables, and YouTube URLs — and produce a clear and responsive weblog put up in Shopify.
Here’s a PDF of ChatGPT’s full Apps Script.
Implications
ChatGPT’s preliminary resolution had a couple of glitches.
- ChatGPT didn’t perceive exactly how Google Doc recordsdata are structured. Its preliminary code seemed for pictures and hyperlinks on the similar stage of the doc hierarchy as a desk or paragraph. In follow, these parts have been inside a paragraph ingredient, i.e., kids of a paragraph ingredient.
- When it generated the perform to create the responsive HTML for the YouTube video, ChatGPT loaded the picture twice. Altering the variable task solved the problem.
- The code is just not excellent. In some locations, it must be refactored to enhance readability and performance.
- The Shopify API required a weblog ID that was not simple to retrieve. Finally, I used the API and a improvement device known as Postman to acquire it.
Nonetheless, the instance reveals ChatGPT can generate helpful code, particularly for a consumer with some technical know-how. What’s extra, the method was quick. I’ve written many Apps Scripts. This one would have taken for much longer with out ChatGPT.
