A lot is manufactured from generative synthetic intelligence’s affect on search, content material, and processes, however it’s additionally a potent coding instrument that would assist ecommerce companies of all sizes.
Whereas they’ve but to rework a novice right into a grasp programmer, ChatGPT and its opponents can produce purposeful 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 huge enterprise. Content material attracts readers to transform into consumers. Nonetheless, Shopify retailers usually encounter an issue.
Whereas it excels at many issues, Shopify’s default weblog editor — suppose content material engine — lacks sturdy options.
As an example, a YouTube URL within the weblog editor produces nothing greater than textual content. It doesn’t mechanically develop right into a video, requiring retailers to stick HTML for that function.
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. That is the habits most content material entrepreneurs anticipate.
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 might compose content material in a instrument equivalent to Google Docs — with photos, 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 elements.
Apps Script is accessible from any Google Doc and offers a improvement setting whereby Google software programming interfaces (APIs) can be found as providers. The code used is basically 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 listing, a desk, or a paragraph. Paragraphs are tough since they’ll include textual content, headings, photos, 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 lead to a responsive embedded video.
- formatCurrentDate() — is a helper perform that retrieves and codecs the present date into the publication date for the weblog publish.
- escapeHTML(textual content) — is a helper perform that removes a set of characters that would trigger issues when the HTML is distributed to Shopify’s API.
Essentially the most stunning a part of ChatGPT’s code technology 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 knowledge.
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, licensed, and put in a customized app. The aim was to gather an API entry token permitting the App Script to publish content material to the Shopify Weblog.
Creating the customized app supplied 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 remodeled a Google Doc into an entire weblog publish in Shopify.
The method is repeatable. Anybody might compose content material in Google Docs — with photos, tables, and YouTube URLs — and produce a clear and responsive weblog publish in Shopify.
Here’s a PDF of ChatGPT’s full Apps Script.
Implications
ChatGPT’s preliminary resolution had a number of glitches.
- ChatGPT didn’t perceive exactly how Google Doc recordsdata are structured. Its preliminary code regarded for photos and hyperlinks on the identical degree of the doc hierarchy as a desk or paragraph. In observe, these parts have been inside a paragraph ingredient, i.e., youngsters 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 difficulty.
- The code is just not excellent. In some locations, it needs to be refactored to enhance readability and performance.
- The Shopify API required a weblog ID that was not straightforward to retrieve. Finally, I used the API and a improvement instrument 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.
