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Unity 2D Animation: Top-Down Unity Player Movement

14th December 2020

The thing that is so popular in the gaming community is the top-down gaming style (also known as isometric games). This type of perspective is often used by games like RPGs.

In this tutorial, we’re going to learn how to create unity top-down movement without writing the actual player movement script just pure animation and a little code. That’s right! We’re going to use Unity Animation to make solid movements for our Player.

Let’s get started!

Open Unity and create a new project. (Make sure it is a 2D game project.)

Unity 2019 2D Game Development - Getting Started

Video Tutorial

If you prefer watching video tutorials, you may watch the video version of this lesson below:

Getting Started

Before we proceed, we need to download the 2D assets that we can use for this project. If you have your own assets like 2D characters and platform backgrounds, you may skip this step. However, we encourage you to follow along so you’ll understand how we made it to the final output.

Press CTRL + 9 to open the asset store or Window tab > Asset Store

Search for Tiny RPG and download the asset.

Build a Top-Down RPG/Adventure game with Unity3D

If you’re looking for more 2D characters, we highly recommend using these retro characters as they all have the complete animations for most game needs.

After importing the assets, design your own platform using the sprites inside the folder Environment or you may download the following image and use it as a sprite.

And here’s how it looks like in the editor:

Unity 2D Game Development Tutorial Series for Beginners

Bringing in the 2D Character

The next thing that we want to do is, of course, bring in our player. To do that, go to Tiny RPG Forest folder, and then Artwork folder, and then the sprites.

Inside the sprites folder, select the hero folder.

Notice the content of the hero folder. There you will see all of the action sprites for the player such as attack, idle, and walk. First, let’s open the Idle folder.

Inside the folder, you will see another three different folders for the different directions our player can be facing (front, back, and sides).

We’re going to select the hero-idle-front sprite and let’s drag it into our scene.

Unity 2D Sprite not showing up above the platform

Sprite not showing up error

If somehow you encounter this type of error after you drag your sprite into your scene. Just make sure that your background or platform has an Order in Layer value of -1.

Unity 2D Sprite not showing up in the scene error

Awesome! Now that the character is in the scene, let’s rename it to Player so we know that he is the player that we’re going to control.

Now that everything is set up, let’s start making our player move around.

There are two ways to control our player. The first option is to add the actual movement to our player and the second option is to add Animation based on that movement. Both are equally possible but the first option will require too much programming and we don’t want that in this tutorial. We want to control our player with little programming possible.

Now, let’s begin by adding Rigidbody 2D to our player. Select your Player, go to the Inspector and click Add Component. Scroll down until you find Physics 2D and then, select Rigidbody 2D.

You may also use the search bar and type Rigidbody 2D instead.

In the Rigidbody 2D component, set the value of Gravity Scale to 0 and under the constraints variable check the Freeze Rotation Z.

Player Movement

Create a new C# script and name it PlayerMovement.cs.

To start the code, let’s declare the first three variables.

public float movementSpeed = 1f;   //Movement Speed of the Player
public Vector2 movement;           //Movement Axis
public Rigidbody2D rigidbody;      //Player Rigidbody Component
Code language: C# (cs)

The next thing that we’re going to do is to give our player’s rigidbody component to the rigidbody variable that we’ve created. To do that, use the GetComponent function.

// Start is called before the first frame update
void Start()
{
    rigidbody = this.GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>();
}
Code language: C# (cs)

Don’t forget to save your code.

Now, what the code above does is, it initialize the rigidbody variable as soon as we start our game. Because of that, we can access the physics to control our player.

If you look at your code, you will see that there is an Update function. If we use the update function, we can control the character in every frame possible. However, update function can be unreliable due to its constantly changing frame rate and we don’t want that for our player but instead, we’re going to use the FixedUpdate function.

Inside your PlayerMovement script, add the fixed update function just underneath the update function.

void FixedUpdate() {}
Code language: C# (cs)

The reason why we’re doing it like this is because we have to make sure that there won’t be any delays to our player movement. FixedUpdate works exactly the same thing as the update function. The only difference is, the update function is depending on the frame rate. So for example, the frame rate goes down to 10 frames per second, expect the player to have a little choppiness to its animation.

FixedUpdate function, however, is by default, called 50 frames per second which are recommended especially if you’re working with Physics.

We’re still going to use the update function for registering the player input.

Let’s work on that.

The next thing that we’re going to do is to find out what exactly our player is currently pressing. Is it WASD? Arrow keys? Touch pad? etc.

In that case, we’re going to use Input.GetAxisRaw() function.

To simply explain what the function above does. Try to imagine the cartesian plane. Both axes will have a range of value between negative one and positive one. If the player presses the left arrow key, the function will return a value of negative one. If the player presses the up key, the function will return a value of positive one. The same goes to the rest of the keys, the function will return you a value depending on which keys your pressing.

Now, to retrieve the value for the x-axis, we’re going to use the horizontal input and to retrieve the value for the y-axis, we’re going to use the vertical input.

// Update is called once per frame
void Update()
{
    movement.x = Input.GetAxisRaw("Horizontal");
    movement.y = Input.GetAxisRaw("Vertical");
}
Code language: C# (cs)

Now that we have the value of our inputs, we can now control the position of our player.

To do that, copy the following code for the FixedUpdate function.

private void FixedUpdate()
{
    rigidbody.MovePosition(rigidbody.position + movement * movementSpeed * Time.fixedDeltaTime);
}
Code language: C# (cs)

What is happening in that code? Simple, we will move our player depending on its current position and then add the value of our input multiplied to the movement speed and fixedDeltaTime.

What is fixedDeltaTime? The interval in seconds at which physics and other fixed frame rate updates.

Save your code and go back to your editor.

If you try to run your game you will see that you can now actually move your player. However, there is no animation yet. Our player moves around but facing towards us. Creepy!

Let’s fix that.

Player Animation

To start animating your player, go to Window tab, Animation, and select Animation. You may also just press CTRL + 6 for a shortcut.

Make sure it is Animation and not ~~Animator~~, some people get confused by that.

Now, with your player game object selected, click create.

You may go to your project root folder and create a new folder for the Animations, just for the sake of file structure.

Name the animation Idle.anim.

Next, go back to the hero folder that contains all the idle sprites and drag the hero-idle-front sprite in the animation window.

Animating 2D Characters using Unity 2019 Animation

Next, create a new Animation clip by clicking the dropdown with the name of your current animation and click Create New Clip…

Creating Animations for 2D Characters with Unity3D

Name your new animation clip Walk_Up.anim and then go to the hero-walk-back folder and drag all the sprites into the animation window.

To select multiple sprites, simply click the first sprite, hold the shift key, and then click the last sprite.

If you try to play the animation, you will see that the animation is playing very fast. To fix that, change the value of Samples to a lower value like 15.

Now, create the animation clips and do the same process for the Walk_Down and Walk_Side animation clips.

If you have noticed, we only have animations for walking right and we don’t have animations for walking left. Now, there are many ways to solve this issue. First is to use Photoshop and manually flip all the sprites so it will face the left axis. Cool! But we’re not going to do that, but instead, we’re going to use our PlayerMovement script to flip the animation so it will look like he’s moving to the left.

Animation Component

After we’ve created all the animations, our player got a new component and that is the Animation.

If you go to Window tab, then Animation, and Animator, you will see something like this.

As you can see, there is our Idle animation, walk_up, walk_down, and walk_side animation. Think of this as a playlist of animations but in order for us to play them, we need to create a certain rule for each animation. For example, if the player is not pressing any keys, then play the idle animation. If the player is pressing the arrow keys or WASD keys then play the walking animation.

In order for us to do that, we need to create a parameter. Go to the top-left corner of the Animator window and click Parameters.

Unity3D Creating Paramaters in Animator window

Right beside the search bar, there is a plus button. Press that and select float. Let’s name it Horizontal.

Again, do the same thing. Create a new parameter and select float and name it Vertical this time.

Next, delete all the animations in the Animator except the idle and walk-side animation.

Deleting Animations in Animator with Unity3D

Animator: Blend Tree

Now that we have the parameters ready, we can now use them to control a blend tree. Blend trees are used to smoothly transition from one animation state to another.

To create a blend tree, go to Animator, right-click, create state and select From New Blend Tree. Go to the inspector and rename it to Vertical.

Next, double click the blend tree and select the node (Blend Tree).

Go to the inspector, make sure the parameter used is vertical.

Then add a new motion field.

Next, find your walk-down animation and drag it to the motion field.
Create another motion field but this time for the walk-up animation.

Awesome! Let’s uncheck the Automate Thresholds in the inspector and modify the thresholds of our animations.

For walk-up animation, the threshold would be 1 and the threshold for the walk-down animation would be -1. We’re doing this because we’re following the values that are given by our input.

Next, go back to the base layer and create a new parameter and call it speed.

Now, we’re going to create a transition between our animations so go ahead and right-click to the idle animation and select make transition. Then select the Vertical blend tree node.

We’re going to do this as well to our Vertical blend tree and walk-side animation, right-click, select make transition and choose the idle animation and vice versa. Awesome!

Transition: Idle to Vertical Blend Tree

Now, click on the transition that points to our vertical blend tree.

In the inspector, make sure that the Has exit time is unchecked and inside the settings, the transition duration is set to 0.

Next, In the conditions section, click the plus button and select speed and then choose Greater than the value 0.01

Transition: Vertical Blend Tree to Idle

Click on the transition that points to our idle animation.

In the inspector, make sure that the Has exit time is unchecked as well and inside the settings, the transition duration is set to 0.

In the conditions section, click the plus button and select speed and then choose Less than the value 0.01

Transition: Idle to Walk-side Animation

Click on the transition that points to our walk-side animation.

In the inspector, make sure that the Has exit time is unchecked as well and inside the settings, the transition duration is set to 0.

In the conditions section, click the plus button and select horizontal and then choose Greater than the value 0.01

Transition: Walk-side Animation to Idle

Click on the transition that points from walk-side animation to our idle animation.

In the inspector, make sure that the Has exit time is unchecked and inside the settings, the transition duration is set to 0.

In the conditions section, click the plus button and select horizontal and then choose Less than the value 0.01

Unity3D Animator Window with Transitions

Scripting Animator Controller

After setting up your animator component, we can now send the value of our input into our animator’s parameters and control our animation state.

To do that, we need to create a new variable.

Go back to your PlayerMovement.cs and add the following variable.

public Animator anim;
public float hf = 0.0f;
public float vf = 0.0f;
Code language: C# (cs)

And inside the start function, add the following code.

anim = this.GetComponent<Animator>();
Code language: C# (cs)

And here’s the new code for the update function

// Update is called once per frame
void Update()
{
    movement.x = Input.GetAxisRaw("Horizontal");
    movement.y = Input.GetAxisRaw("Vertical");

    hf = movement.x > 0.01f ? movement.x : movement.x < -0.01f ? 1 : 0;
    vf = movement.y > 0.01f ? movement.y : movement.y < -0.01f ? 1 : 0;
    if (movement.x < -0.01f)
    {
        this.gameObject.transform.localScale = new Vector3(-1, 1, 1);
    } else
    {
        this.gameObject.transform.localScale = new Vector3(1, 1, 1);
    }

    anim.SetFloat("Horizontal", hf);
    anim.SetFloat("Vertical", movement.y);
    anim.SetFloat("Speed", vf);
}
Code language: C# (cs)

Save your script and go back to your editor and see the results!

Normalizing Player Movement

There are instances that when you move your player up and right at the same time, the movement speed multiplies by two.

To ensure that all movement speeds are equally balanced, add the following code just below where we used the Input.GetAxisRaw();

movement = movement.normalized;
Code language: C# (cs)

Closing Line

Congratulations! You just made your top-down player movement.

Do you have questions or suggestions? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll try our best to communicate with you.

If you’re looking for the next step, then we have already published a new tutorial on how to make this player character attack with animation.

Read next: How To Do 2D Melee Combat in Unity 2019

Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended.

Shopify Tutorial PHP: Update Product’s Collection with Collect API

5th October 2020

So you are developing a Shopify app where merchants can easily customize their product’s title, description, and even the prices. However, you forgot one thing and that is the collections.

How do you actually update the product’s collections?

In this Shopify tutorial, we’ll learn how to update the product’s collections using Collect REST API and PHP.

Video Tutorial

If you prefer to learn through a video tutorial, you may watch the following video.

Getting started

To get started, we’ll assume that you have followed our Shopify app tutorial series and you are using the same repository/client that we are using here.

Now, for this tutorial, we’ll only need the following three files.

index.php
ajax.php
product.php

In our product.php, we should have the following code:


<div class="card-columns">
<?php
$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products.json", array(), 'GET');
$products = json_decode($products['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

foreach ($products as $product) {
	foreach ($product as $key => $value) {
		$images = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $value['id'] . "/images.json", array(), 'GET');
		$images  = json_decode($images['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
		?>

			<div class="card" product-id="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>">
				<img class="card-img-top" src="<?php echo $images['images'][0]['src']; ?>" alt="Card image cap">
				<div class="card-body">
					<h5 class="card-title"><?php echo $value['title']; ?></h5>
				</div>
			</div>

		<?php
	}
}
?>
</div>

<!-- Modal -->
<div class="modal fade" id="productsModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="productsModalLabel" aria-hidden="true">
  <div class="modal-dialog" role="document">
    <div class="modal-content">
      <div class="modal-header">
        <h5 class="modal-title" id="exampleModalLabel">Modal title</h5>
        <button type="button" class="close" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close">
          <span aria-hidden="true">&times;</span>
        </button>
      </div>
      <div class="modal-body">
        <form action="ajax.php" id="productForm">
        	<div class="form-group">
        		<label for="productName">Product Title</label>
        		<input type="text" class="form-control" id="productName" name="productName">
        	</div>
        	<div class="form-group">
        		<label for="productDescription">Product Description</label>
        		<textarea class="form-control" id="productDescription" name="productDescription" rows="7"></textarea>
        	</div>
        	<div class="form-group">
        		<select class="custom-select" id="productCollection" name="productCollection" multiple>
              <?php
                $custom_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/custom_collections.json", array(), 'GET');
                $custom_collections = json_decode($custom_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

                foreach ($custom_collections as $custom_collection) {
                  foreach ($custom_collection as $key => $value) {
                    ?>
                      <option value="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>"><?php echo $value['title']; ?></option>
                    <?php
                  }
                }

                $smart_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/smart_collections.json", array(), 'GET');
                $smart_collections = json_decode($smart_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

                foreach ($smart_collections as $smart_collection) {
                  foreach ($smart_collection as $key => $value) {
                    ?>
                      <option value="<?php echo $value['id']; ?>"><?php echo $value['title']; ?></option>
                    <?php
                  }
                }
              ?>
        		</select>
        	</div>
        </form>
      </div>
      <div class="modal-footer">
        <button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-dismiss="modal">Close</button>
        <button type="button" class="btn btn-primary" id="SaveProduct" product-id=''>Save changes</button>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

In our index.php, we should have the following code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.1.3/css/bootstrap.min.css">
    <title>WeeklyHow Shopify App</title>
  </head>
  <body>

	<div class="container">
		<?php
		include_once("inc/functions.php");
		include_once("inc/mysql_connect.php");
		include_once("header.php");
		include_once("products.php");
		?>
	</div>
    <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.min.js"></script>
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.14.3/umd/popper.min.js"></script>
    <script src="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.1.3/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

    <script>
      var shop = '<?php echo $shop_url; ?>';

      $('div[product-id]').on('click', function (e) {
        $.ajax({
          method: 'POST',
          data: {
            url: shop,
            id: $(this).attr('product-id'),
            type: 'GET'
          },
          url:'ajax.php',
          dataType: 'json',
          success:function(json){
            console.log(json);

            $('#productName').val(json['title']);
            $('#productDescription').val(json['description']);

            $('#productCollection option').each(function(i) {
              var optionCollection = $(this).val();

              json['collections'].forEach(function(productCollection) {
                if(productCollection['id'] == optionCollection) {
                  $('#productCollection option[value=' + optionCollection + ']').attr('selected', 'selected');
                }

              });
            });


            $('#SaveProduct').attr('product-id', json['id']);
            $('#productsModal').modal('show');
          }   
        }); 
      });


      $('#productsModal').on('hide.bs.modal', function() {
        $('#SaveProduct').attr('product-id', '');
        $('#productCollection').val([]);
      });

      $('#SaveProduct').on('click', function() {
        var productID = $(this).attr('product-id');

        $.ajax({
          method: 'POST',
          data: {
            url: shop,
            id: productID,
            product: $('#productForm').serialize(),
            type: 'PUT'
          },
          url:'ajax.php',
          dataType: 'html',
          success:function(json){
            console.log(json);
          }   
        }); 
      });
    </script>
  </body>
</html>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

And for our ajax.php, we should have the following code:

<?php
require_once("inc/functions.php");
require_once("inc/mysql_connect.php");

$id = $_POST['id'];
$shop_url = $_POST['url'];

$sql = "SELECT * FROM shops WHERE shop_url='" . $shop_url . "' LIMIT 1";
$check = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

if(mysqli_num_rows($check) > 0) {
	$shop_row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($check);

	$token = $shop_row['access_token'];

	if($_POST['type'] == 'GET') {
		$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $id . ".json", array(), 'GET');
		$products = json_decode($products['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		$id = $products['product']['id'];
		$title = $products['product']['title'];
		$description = $products['product']['body_html'];
		$collections = array();

		$custom_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/custom_collections.json", array("product_id" => $id), 'GET');
		$custom_collections = json_decode($custom_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($custom_collections as $custom_collection) {
			foreach ($custom_collection as $key => $value) {
				array_push($collections, array("id" => $value['id'], "name" => $value['title']));
			}
		}

		$smart_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/smart_collections.json", array("product_id" => $id), 'GET');
		$smart_collections = json_decode($smart_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($smart_collections as $smart_collection) {
			foreach ($smart_collection as $key => $value) {
				array_push($collections, array("id" => $value['id'], "name" => $value['title']));
			}
		}

		echo json_encode(
			array(
				"id" => $id,
				"title" => $title,
				"description" => $description,
				"collections" => $collections
			)
		);

	} else if( $_POST['type'] == 'PUT' ) {
		$productData = array();
		$productData = proper_parse_str($_POST['product']);

		$array = array("product" => array("title" => $productData['productName'], "body_html" => $productData['productDescription']));

		$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $id . ".json", $array, 'PUT');
	}
	
}
?>
Code language: PHP (php)

The scripts above should allow us to edit and save a new title and description for any of the products that we select below.

Now, what we want to do is when we select a product. A bootstrap modal should appear and allow us to select new collections for our product.

updating shopify products in bootstrap modal

Updating the product’s collection

There are two ways to update the product’s collection. One is to use the Collection API, delete the collection attached to the product, and create the deleted collection and assign all of the previous products assigned to the collection except that product that we selected. Two is to use Collect API.

Obviously, the first option is the worse way of updating the product’s collection. Why? Because it’s ugly and it’s making too many unnecessary API calls.

However, if you use collect API instead, all we needed to do is to get the collect attached to the product that we selected, delete the collect, and create a new collect with the new collection. Simple as that!

Let’s start by getting all of the collect from collect API. Open the ajax.php and update its code to the following:

<?php
require_once("inc/functions.php");
require_once("inc/mysql_connect.php");

$id = $_POST['id'];
$shop_url = $_POST['url'];

$sql = "SELECT * FROM shops WHERE shop_url='" . $shop_url . "' LIMIT 1";
$check = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

if(mysqli_num_rows($check) > 0) {
	$shop_row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($check);

	$token = $shop_row['access_token'];

	if($_POST['type'] == 'GET') {
		$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $id . ".json", array(), 'GET');
		$products = json_decode($products['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		$id = $products['product']['id'];
		$title = $products['product']['title'];
		$description = $products['product']['body_html'];
		$collections = array();

		$custom_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/custom_collections.json", array("product_id" => $id), 'GET');
		$custom_collections = json_decode($custom_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($custom_collections as $custom_collection) {
			foreach ($custom_collection as $key => $value) {
				array_push($collections, array("id" => $value['id'], "name" => $value['title']));
			}
		}

		$smart_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/smart_collections.json", array("product_id" => $id), 'GET');
		$smart_collections = json_decode($smart_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($smart_collections as $smart_collection) {
			foreach ($smart_collection as $key => $value) {
				array_push($collections, array("id" => $value['id'], "name" => $value['title']));
			}
		}

		echo json_encode(
			array(
				"id" => $id,
				"title" => $title,
				"description" => $description,
				"collections" => $collections
			)
		);

	} else if( $_POST['type'] == 'PUT' ) {
		$productData = array();
		parse_str($_POST['product'], $productData);

		$array = array("product" => array("title" => $productData['productName'], "body_html" => $productData['productDescription']));

		$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $id . ".json", $array, 'PUT');

		$collects = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/collects.json", array('product_id' => $id), 'GET');
		$collects = json_decode($collects['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($collects as $collect) {
			foreach ($collect as $key => $value) {
				$collects = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/collects/" . $value['id'] .".json", array(), 'DELETE');
			}
		}

	}
	
}
?>
Code language: PHP (php)

In the code above, we first get the collects assigned to our selected product and then loop through each collect using foreach and then delete each collect. These are just basics and you should be able to follow along 🙂

Next, we’ll use POST endpoint to create the new collect.

<?php
require_once("inc/functions.php");
require_once("inc/mysql_connect.php");

$id = $_POST['id'];
$shop_url = $_POST['url'];

$sql = "SELECT * FROM shops WHERE shop_url='" . $shop_url . "' LIMIT 1";
$check = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

if(mysqli_num_rows($check) > 0) {
	$shop_row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($check);

	$token = $shop_row['access_token'];

	if($_POST['type'] == 'GET') {
		$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $id . ".json", array(), 'GET');
		$products = json_decode($products['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		$id = $products['product']['id'];
		$title = $products['product']['title'];
		$description = $products['product']['body_html'];
		$collections = array();

		$custom_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/custom_collections.json", array("product_id" => $id), 'GET');
		$custom_collections = json_decode($custom_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($custom_collections as $custom_collection) {
			foreach ($custom_collection as $key => $value) {
				array_push($collections, array("id" => $value['id'], "name" => $value['title']));
			}
		}

		$smart_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/smart_collections.json", array("product_id" => $id), 'GET');
		$smart_collections = json_decode($smart_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($smart_collections as $smart_collection) {
			foreach ($smart_collection as $key => $value) {
				array_push($collections, array("id" => $value['id'], "name" => $value['title']));
			}
		}

		echo json_encode(
			array(
				"id" => $id,
				"title" => $title,
				"description" => $description,
				"collections" => $collections
			)
		);

	} else if( $_POST['type'] == 'PUT' ) {
		$productData = array();
		parse_str($_POST['product'], $productData);

		$array = array("product" => array("title" => $productData['productName'], "body_html" => $productData['productDescription']));

		$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $id . ".json", $array, 'PUT');

		$collects = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/collects.json", array('product_id' => $id), 'GET');
		$collects = json_decode($collects['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($collects as $collect) {
			foreach ($collect as $key => $value) {
				$collects = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/collects/" . $value['id'] .".json", array(), 'DELETE');
			}
		}


		if( count($productData['productCollection'] ) > 0) {
			for ($i = 0; $i < count($productData['productCollection']); $i++) { 
				if(count($productData['productCollection']) >= 0 && count($productData['productCollection']) <= 1) {
					$value = $productData['productCollection'];
				} else {
					$value = $productData['productCollection'][$i];
				}
				

				$collects = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/collects.json", array('collect' => array('product_id' => $id, 'collection_id' => $value)), 'POST');
			}
		}
	}
	
}
?>
Code language: PHP (php)

In the above code, we need to check if the collections selected by the merchant is more than one. If it is, then we’ll loop through each collections and create the collect using the value of product ID and collection ID.

If you’re wondering why there is a condition inside the loop, it’s because the productData variable can create two-dimensional arrays especially if the length of the array is more than 1. So we need to make sure we get both values regardless of the array length.

With everything saved, we should be able to update the product’s collections. BUT! Unfortunately, the built-in parse_str() function is not going to work if there are two or more query strings with the same name.

For example, let’s say we have the following query string:

https://weeklyhow.com/?id=1&id=2&id=3
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

If we use the built-in parse string function, the function will only return the last value which is 3.

So if we use the same function, it’ll most likely not create the first collects.

To fix that, we’ll have to use the following function provided by Evan K from php.net:

function proper_parse_str($str) {
  # result array
  $arr = array();

  # split on outer delimiter
  $pairs = explode('&', $str);

  # loop through each pair
  foreach ($pairs as $i) {
    # split into name and value
    list($name,$value) = explode('=', $i, 2);
   
    # if name already exists
    if( isset($arr[$name]) ) {
      # stick multiple values into an array
      if( is_array($arr[$name]) ) {
        $arr[$name][] = $value;
      }
      else {
        $arr[$name] = array($arr[$name], $value);
      }
    }
    # otherwise, simply stick it in a scalar
    else {
      $arr[$name] = $value;
    }
  }

  # return result array
  return $arr;
}
Code language: PHP (php)

You can copy the above function and paste it either on the very top of ajax.php or inside the functions.php.

Once you’re done copying the code, we should then be able to use it instead of the parse_str() function.

<?php
require_once("inc/functions.php");
require_once("inc/mysql_connect.php");

$id = $_POST['id'];
$shop_url = $_POST['url'];

$sql = "SELECT * FROM shops WHERE shop_url='" . $shop_url . "' LIMIT 1";
$check = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

if(mysqli_num_rows($check) > 0) {
	$shop_row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($check);

	$token = $shop_row['access_token'];

	if($_POST['type'] == 'GET') {
		$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $id . ".json", array(), 'GET');
		$products = json_decode($products['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		$id = $products['product']['id'];
		$title = $products['product']['title'];
		$description = $products['product']['body_html'];
		$collections = array();

		$custom_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/custom_collections.json", array("product_id" => $id), 'GET');
		$custom_collections = json_decode($custom_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($custom_collections as $custom_collection) {
			foreach ($custom_collection as $key => $value) {
				array_push($collections, array("id" => $value['id'], "name" => $value['title']));
			}
		}

		$smart_collections = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/smart_collections.json", array("product_id" => $id), 'GET');
		$smart_collections = json_decode($smart_collections['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($smart_collections as $smart_collection) {
			foreach ($smart_collection as $key => $value) {
				array_push($collections, array("id" => $value['id'], "name" => $value['title']));
			}
		}

		echo json_encode(
			array(
				"id" => $id,
				"title" => $title,
				"description" => $description,
				"collections" => $collections
			)
		);

	} else if( $_POST['type'] == 'PUT' ) {
		$productData = array();
		$productData = proper_parse_str($_POST['product']);

		$array = array("product" => array("title" => urldecode($productData['productName']), "body_html" => urldecode($productData['productDescription'])));
		
		$products = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/products/" . $id . ".json", $array, 'PUT');

		$collects = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/collects.json", array('product_id' => $id), 'GET');
		$collects = json_decode($collects['response'], JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

		foreach ($collects as $collect) {
			foreach ($collect as $key => $value) {
				$collects = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/collects/" . $value['id'] .".json", array(), 'DELETE');
			}
		}


		if( count($productData['productCollection'] ) > 0) {
			for ($i = 0; $i < count($productData['productCollection']); $i++) { 
				if(count($productData['productCollection']) >= 0 && count($productData['productCollection']) <= 1) {
					$value = $productData['productCollection'];
				} else {
					$value = $productData['productCollection'][$i];
				}
				

				$collects = shopify_call($token, $shop_url, "/admin/api/2020-07/collects.json", array('collect' => array('product_id' => $id, 'collection_id' => $value)), 'POST');
			}
		}
	}
	
}
?>
Code language: PHP (php)

Now, query strings are encoded to URL text formatting that’s why before we save the new title and description, we’ll have to decode the title and description back to a normal text format using urldecode() function.

Now if we save all of our scripts and run the app, we should then be able to update the collections without any problem. Awesome!

Updating shopify product collection in bootstrap modal

Conclusion

Updating a product’s collection can be a hassle especially if the products are attached to not just a custom collection, but also to a smart collection. However, with collect API, we should be able to update the product’s collection without doing too much unnecessary API calls.

We hope that you learned how to update your products using collect API. If you have encountered any issues or errors, let us know in the comments below and we’ll try to help out! 🙂

Videoder Premium Downloader APK Latest Version 14.5 (Updated)

25th September 2020

Videoder Premium APK for android is one of the best downloaders for downloading youtube videos in 2020. The free version of Videoder APP will only let you download videos but with Videoder premium, you will be able to download videos with no ads.

If you have been using YouTube downloaders for a long time then you may probably know already that Videoder is not available in the PlayStore. This is due to its violation of the PlayStore policies. So if you want to use this app, it is highly recommended to download directly from their official site.

What is Videoder?

Videoder is a free video downloader and converter for both android devices and PC.

Videoder was officially founded by Rahul Verma back in 2013 with the support of his team Varun, a full stack developer who is involved in both backend and frontend development of Videoder. Surbhi Singla is also part of Rahul’s team. She manages all of the operations involved in Videoder including brand promotion and marketing.

Up until now, Videoder is believed to be one of the most known video downloaders online.

Download Videos Everywhere

Videoder Premium APK supports over 50+ websites that stream videos and music including most of the popular sites like:

YouTube
Facebook
Instagram
Dailymotion
Twitter
Hotstar
voot
vidme
9Anime
Soundcloud
9gag
AudioBoom
IMDB
Funny Or Die
Liveleak
TED
Vine
Vimeo
VK
SonyLiv
Viu
RuTube
Youku
TVF Play
TikTok
Ozee
and more!

If one of your favorite streaming websites is not available in the list, you may contact Videoder and they will add them for just you!

New Features

Videoder Premium APK offers the following new features:

YouTube Playlist Downloader

Videoder Premium APK allows you to download videos all at once with its YouTube Playlist Downloader feature

Download YouTube videos

Download youtube videos to your phone or pc with Videoder for free.

Built-in Browser & Ad-Blocker

Download videos on the go with built-in browser and with no interruptions thanks to Ad-block feature.

Insanely Fast Download

Videoder uses multiple network connections to boost your downloading speed.

Download Videoder Premium APK for Android

Videoder Premium APK is currently supporting Android devices, Windows PC and MAC. You may also download videos from YouTube Red using Videoder Premium.

To start downloading videos online, click the download button below.

Download

How To Install Videoder Premium APK?

Step 1

Download Videoder Premium APK. If your browser warns you on downloading APK outside PlayStore, ignore it as you are downloading from the official Videoder site.

Step 2

Wait for the app to be downloaded in the notifications panel. Once the download is complete, tap on the completed notification to install.

Step 3

Your settings may not allow you to install the APK outside Play Store. If you see the popup as shown below, tap on SETTINGS and follow the next instructions.

Step 4

Go to ‘ Settings -> Security -> Unknown Sources ‘ and turn it on. You may turn this off again if you’ve finished installing videoder.

Step 5

Go back to Downloads and open the downloaded and complete the installation. Do not forget to turn off Unknown Sources once the installation is complete.

Youtube downloader Videoder successfully installed

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that Videoder is one of the most used downloaders and converter online. But if for some reason the app doesn’t allow you to download then there are Videoder alternatives that you can use.

If you have encountered any issues. Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below. We’d love to help out!

Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended.

How to Become A Unity Developer (Complete Beginner’s Guide)

29th June 2020

Have you ever wondered how game companies created their games? Have you been researching how to become a unity developer or how to learn game development? If so, then you have come to the right place!

Today, we will be taking a look at a variety of different topics that are closely related to game development. However, we’ll be only focusing on one particular game engine and that is Unity and by the end of this article, you should be able to answer the following questions:

What makes Unity so good compared to other game engines?
What is the difference between a game designer and a game developer?
What is the best programming language for game development?
and more.

But before we get to the actual process of how to become a unity developer, let’s understand first what is Unity and what makes Unity stand out from other game engines.

What is Unity?

Unity is one of the most popular game engines that you can use for game development. It is just so good that you can create games in just 10 minutes or less. But what makes it stand out to other game engines?

Unity vs. Other Game Engines

The following are the features that makes Unity stand out.

Easy to use

Compared to other game engines, Unity is one of the easiest tools to learn. In fact, if you ever get lost, you can easily navigate to their manual page through the help tab.

Well, it’s just a manual. Do you say?

Their documentation is very straight to the point and easy to understand and navigate through. It’s like their manual is not only meant for beginners but also for the ones that have experienced Unity.

Easy Programming Language

Unity used to work with JavaScript (also known as UnityScript), Boo and C# all at the same time but since working with three programming languages at the same time is one hell of a job, they decided to get rid of JavaScript and Boo, and stay with C#, which we believe is a good decision.

C# is one of the easiest programming languages out there and if you want to become a Unity developer, learning the programming language C# is your way to go. C# is also based on C which makes it easier to transition to other programming languages.

So you know C# already but still don’t know how to use it with Unity?

Well, Unity also provides scripting references! If you ever get confused about their built-in attributes and functions, you can just find it on their scripting references and there they explain each and everything.

Multi-Platform Development

Unity offers a multiple platform development which means you can build your games for android phones and later on build it for iOS, Windows PC, Mac and other platforms without having any issues at all.

Compatibility

Unlike Unreal Engine, Unity allows you to create complex projects for low-end devices without requiring a powerful computer setup. However, if you are looking to create a project that is too detailed then obviously none of the two will help you out. So if you think your computer is not the best then we suggest you start with mobile game development or casual game development.

With that said, Unity is the best game engine for developers who only have low-end computers.

Affordability

Compared to other game engines, Unity is very affordable. In fact, if your plan is to just learn game development, you can have Unity personal license for FREE!

Best Community Ever

Unity has the best and the most active community ever. Compared to other game engines, Unity provides a very good community that can support you throughout your game development journey.

Not only that, but Unity is also everywhere. You got scripting issues? search it on Google and you will find your answer immediately. You want tutorials? We have plenty of gaming tutorials here dedicated for Unity development.

How To Become A Unity Developer: Step by Step Guide

We’re not going to lie but learning how to develop video games is hard. Not only that but it also offers a TON of work. However, if you compare it to other skills or career paths, becoming a Unity developer is actually one of the easiest and coolest choices you could ever make!

If you’re still reading all the way here then that makes you really fit for this kind of career. Let’s get through the process of becoming a Unity developer.

Step 1: Understand Why You Want To Become A Unity Developer

The first and one of the most important steps on how to become a Unity developer is understanding and identifying your reasons for why you want to become a game developer.

Why do you want to learn game development?

Is it because you’re just curious about how games are created? or you really want it to turn into a career? or you have game designs in your head that you want to become a reality?

Most games especially the ones that are created by big companies are often created by multiple people with different roles. There are game designers, animators, 3D modeling, programmers, and sound designers.

Now why is this important?

Well, understanding the purpose of your quest and knowing what you really want to achieve will not only benefit you but also save you from future headaches.

You see, game development is a very tedious task especially if your game projects are overly huge.

Step 2: Installing Unity Editor

Before you can start learning how to become a Unity developer, obviously, you will need to install Unity into your computer.

Download Unity Editor 2020

Once you arrived to the plans and pricing page, just select Personal under the Individual tab and this should allow you to download the latest Unity Hub Installer.

Step 3: Playing Around Unity

Once you are able to use Unity, play around and understand each corner of the editor. Unity also provide free projects that you can download from their Asset Store and so if you ever get confused or lost, this is where you can use their documentation.

Step 4: Taking Unity Courses Online

Another way to fasten your learning journey is by taking Unity courses online. However, if you’re not interested in spending money on these courses then YouTube is your best option.

There are hundreds of free videos online that can help you understand how to use Unity. We recommend our good friend Brackeys. He provides good and straight to the point tutorials that will surely help you start.

Step 5: Never Stop & Focus On Your Projects

If you’re really serious of becoming a game developer then you have to commit to it. It’s unfortunate that we often see game developers start their project and after a couple of months they just get sick of it and stopped working. This is mostly the case especially if they only care for the profit of their work.

If you really want to become a Unity developer then you have make sure that you finish your projects. So don’t stop and just focus on finishing your projects.

Step 6: Publish Your First Game

After some time, usually 3-6 months, you should be able to publish your very first game. Wai-what?! I should be able to publish a game in just 3-6 months?! I don’t even know how to animate my character yet!

Well, that could be true that some game projects may take much time longer than 6 months but the whole point of learning to become a Unity developer is to start from a small game. We suggest to not look too much into detail like animations or graphics since they do take most of the time in development.

Now let’s say you have your first game ready for publishing. Where can you publish your game?

There are many places that you can publish your game but it all just depends on which platform your game is built. If it is meant for PC then publish your game on Steam. If it is a game meant for Android mobile phones then publish your game on the App Store. Just don’t forget to indicate that you are the developer who created the game as it will increase your respect+ points (*wink*).

Bonus Tip For Becoming a Unity Developer

We understand that learning how to create video games is hard and that’s why we’d love to provide you more tips and hopefully these helps you boost your learning journey.

Improve your programming skills

Every game developer knows that you always need to improve your skills in order to create something spectacular. If you’re looking to become a great Unity Developer, you need to learn everything about Unity editor.

Taking courses online regarding Unity and experimenting will also come in handy. You always need to try this out and improve your skills the best way you can, as it will make a huge difference in the long term. Plus, you can even read books on the topic, and Unity itself has a lot of tutorials and videos you can go through.

There are also plenty of Unity Game Development Cookbooks that you can use and download online that will surely help you learn game development and the whole process of game development.

Get a certification

So you’re taking this very seriously and you want your next career to be a Unity Developer. Well, acquiring a programming certification or even a Unity certification can help as well.

You want to show gaming companies that you have what it takes to work with Unity. Many times companies want developers with experience or a certification that shows their expertise. Get that, and you will have an advantage for getting jobs as a Unity Developer.

Learn more about the production process

A good Unity Developer will always have a plan in place for the game. You want to avoid situations when you are a feature creep and constantly focus on adding features. What you want to do is to plan everything accordingly and prepare a proper production map. That will give you more insight and focus, and you can also prevent any issues that can sometimes arise.

Understand how you can use the asset store

Some people that use assets get a bad rap, but they usually rely on them too much. Assets and templates can help you save time, and they can be very helpful. Since Unity has its own asset store, it makes a lot of sense to check it out and testing it for yourself. It can make a huge difference for you and people will appreciate it more.

Find ways to create systems that you can reuse and re-purpose

Automating stuff or having scripts to make the job easier is very helpful for every game developer. A Unity Developer in particular will appreciate this because you get to customize everything in the future. It works seamlessly and it will make your process a lot easier.

We recommend reading our tutorial on how to create a custom unity editor. This will help you customize your games much faster instead of doing it manually.

Unity Tutorials: How To Create Custom Editor Window

Study the Unity roadmap and be active on their forums

Every good Unity Developer stays on the forum, interacts with the Unity creators, talks about features and bugs, etc. These things will help you become a great developer and you will be able to focus a lot more on results and value.

Stuff like this can always make a huge difference, and it will surely give you the outcome that you would expect. You need to stay up to date with their roadmap too, since it will help you figure out whether you need such functions in your game.

Conclusion

Becoming a Unity Developer is a dream come true for a lot of programmers. While it can be tricky to become a Unity Developer at first, with the right planning, education and focus you can make it work. Yes, it requires a lot of practice, but it will help you pursue your dreams while also being able to create outstanding games!

Unity Tutorials: How To Create Custom Editor Window

15th June 2020

Have you been wondering how Unity Developers created those systems or plugins that you have downloaded from the assets store? We’re not going to lie but we do too actually.

We’ve been doing research on how to create our own plugins and to be honest, it’s not THAT really complicated at all.

All you really need honestly is to create a C# script and add a few lines of code that creates the menu and the window, and… it’s all up to you what you’re going to put in the custom window that you created.

However, if you’re not really sure what we’re talking about here then don’t worry. We’re here to help you out.

In this tutorial, we’re gonna be looking at how to create your very own custom editor window that you can use to speed up your game development process.

Getting Started

For this tutorial, we don’t really need to set up a scene. All we need is a C# script and that’s it.

Note: It’s a good practice to always separate your custom editor scripts from your game scripts. Most developers put these scripts in the Editor folder.

Important: Scripts inside the Editor folder will not be included in the builds. That’s why it’s important to NOT reference your custom editor scripts to your game scripts.

Creating the Custom Editor

Create a new C# script and name it CustomUnityEditor.cs and copy the following code:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    
}
Code language: CSS (css)

Notice that our code above is different from your usual scripts.

Normally we use the namespace UnityEngine to get almost everything that we need to program our game. However, this namespace never gives you the ability to extend Unity, that’s why we added UnityEditor. This namespace will allow us to almost control everything inside Unity.

Now, since we don’t really want this script to only process once it’s applied to a game object, we had to change it from MonoBehaviour to EditorWindow. This will hint Unity that this script is a custom editor script and will always run throughout the editor.

Now the next thing we’re going to do is to create a menu.

Open the CustomUnityEditor.cs script once again and update its code to the following:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {

    }
}

For the update above, we just simply created a custom menu using the MenuItem attribute. The MenuItem attribute allows you to add custom menu items to the main menu and the inspector context menus.

But after using the MenuItem attribute, you must include underneath it a function that will run once you have clicked the menu. That’s why we added the function CustomEditorWindow().

Save the script and head back to Unity.

Once the script is saved, you should be able to see the custom menu in Unity like in the above image. Clicking the Run option though will not do anything at the moment. This is obviously because we have no process yet inside your CustomEditorWindow() functon.

Now let’s start creating the custom editor window.

Open the CustomUnityEditor.cs script once again and update its code to the following:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

In the update above, we just added the GetWindow() to render a custom editor window. Basically, what GetWindow() will do is it will check if the CustomUnityEditor type already exists in Unity. If it does, then open the editor window. Otherwise, create and show a new one and return its instance of it.

Save the script and you should be able to create your own editor window.

Graphical User Interface

Now that we have our custom editor window working, it’s time for us to add content inside this window.

To do that, we’ll have to use the built-in function OnGUI(). You probably remember this but back in the day, OnGUI() is used to draw buttons, labels, and other user interfaces in the game but ever since the new UI system is added to Unity, OnGUI() becomes something that you only use for the editor.

Let’s head back to our script and update its code to the following:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        
    }
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

GUI Labels

To create a label for your custom unity editor, all you need to do is to use GUILayout.Label() function:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor");
    }
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

This should give you the following:

If you want to add styles to your labels, all you need to do is to use EditorStyles as the second argument for Label().

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");
    }
}

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

This should give you the following:

GUI Space

There are instances that you find the content of your editor, a bit, cramped and so Unity provided a way that allows you to give spaces between your elements.

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
    }
}

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

GUI Text Field

The most commonly used for custom editors is the text field. This allows you to modify any value that your game objects are holding.

Keep in mind though that working with text fields is a little bit different. Instead of using GUILayout, you will have to use EditorGUILayout.

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;
    private string _name = "";

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        _name = EditorGUILayout.TextField("Name", _name);
    }
}

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

For text fields, it’s important to dedicate and create its own variable to assign the value of the text field. Also, make sure that whenever you create the variable, it’s value is initialized. Otherwise, you will get a null-value error.

GUI Color

Also one of the most commonly used elements. The process of adding color picker into your editor is pretty much the same with creating a text field. The only difference is instead of making a string (or int, float, etc) variable, you use Color.

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;
    private string _name = "";
    private Color _color;

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Name your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _name = EditorGUILayout.TextField("Name", _name);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Pick a color for your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _color = EditorGUILayout.ColorField("Color", _color);
    }
}

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

This should give you the following:

GUI Toggle

Creating a toggle for your custom editor is also very simple. Just create boolean variable and use Toggle() function:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;
    private string _name = "";
    private Color _color;
    private bool _active = false;

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Name your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _name = EditorGUILayout.TextField("Name", _name);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Pick a color for your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _color = EditorGUILayout.ColorField("Color", _color);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Is the object(s) available in the scene?", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _active = EditorGUILayout.Toggle("Toggle", _active);
    }
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

This should give you the following:

GUI Button

Buttons are one of the most useful things that you can add to your editor. To add a button to your editor, all you need to do is to use GUILayout.Button() as an argument for an if statement.

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;
    private string _name = "";
    private Color _color;
    private bool _active = false;

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Name your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _name = EditorGUILayout.TextField("Name", _name);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Pick a color for your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _color = EditorGUILayout.ColorField("Color", _color);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Is the object(s) available in the scene?", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _active = EditorGUILayout.Toggle("Toggle", _active);

        if(GUILayout.Button("Proceed"))
        {

        }
    }
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

This will allow you to send a process once the button is clicked.

Now, the question is…

How do you actually use these elements to control and modify your game objects?

There are two ways to do that:

Using GUILayout.Button()
Using events

Using Buttons for Unity Editor

Let’s start first with the button. Let’s make it work like whenever we press the button, the name of the game object that we selected will be replaced by the value of _name. The color of the game object will be replaced with _color, and the availability of the game object will be controlled by the toggle.

Open the editor script once again and update its code to the following:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;
    private string _name = "";
    private Color _color;
    private bool _active = false;

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Name your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _name = EditorGUILayout.TextField("Name", _name);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Pick a color for your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _color = EditorGUILayout.ColorField("Color", _color);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Is the object(s) available in the scene?", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _active = EditorGUILayout.Toggle("Toggle", _active);

        if(GUILayout.Button("Proceed"))
        {
            GameObjectRename(Selection.gameObjects);
        }
    }

    private void GameObjectRename(GameObject[] objects)
    {
        foreach (var obj in objects)
        {
            obj.name = _name;
        }
    }
}

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

In the updated code above, we added a function that when we pressed the GUI Button, all of the selected game objects will be given a new name.

In order to do that, we’ll have to loop through all of the selected game objects in our editor. Luckily, we have what’s called Selection.

Selection is one of the most useful classes in UnityEditor. One of its use is to allow you to access all of the selected game objects in the editor.

Like in the code above, we have used Selection.gameObjects. This will provide us all of the game objects that we selected in the editor.

We also created a function GameObjectRename(). Since we’re passing an array of game objects, we’ll have to create its parameter to be an array.

Inside this function, we loop through all of the selected game objects and each game object will get a new name.

So if you save the script and head back to Unity, you should be able to rename all of the game objects in your scene.

Using Events for Unity Editor

Now that we’re able to change the name of our game objects on click of a button. How about changing the names of our game objects when we change the value of the elements of our custom editor? You know? Like the inspector. When you adjust the position of the game objects, the game objects move as well without hitting a button.

In order for us to do that, we’ll have to use two functions that will check if any of our editor GUI is being updated.

Let’s take a closer look. Have your editor script updated to the following:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;
    private string _name = "";
    private Color _color;
    private bool _active = false;

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        EditorGUI.BeginChangeCheck();

        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Name your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _name = EditorGUILayout.TextField("Name", _name);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Pick a color for your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _color = EditorGUILayout.ColorField("Color", _color);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Is the object(s) available in the scene?", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _active = EditorGUILayout.Toggle("Toggle", _active);

        if(GUILayout.Button("Proceed"))
        {
            GameObjectRename(Selection.gameObjects);
        }

        if(EditorGUI.EndChangeCheck())
        {
            Debug.Log("Value changed");
        }
    }

    private void GameObjectRename(GameObject[] objects)
    {
        foreach (var obj in objects)
        {
            obj.name = _name;
        }
    }
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

In the updated code above, we added two things. One is the BeginChangeCheck() function and second is the EndChangeCheck() function. The first function will obviously start checking if something in the editor is being updated.

However, when you use this function, you have to make sure that you end this with an EndChangeCheck() function and this function should be used as an argument for an if statement.

Everything that is between this two functions will be checked if something is changing.

Inside the if statement is where you can add functions when the editor found something changed.

Now you may be asking.

How do we actually know if a certain element changed?

The answer is actually pretty simple.

You will have to compare the value of the previous element to the current value of the element. If the values are not the same then that means they’re meant to be updated. Otherwise, they’re not.

Alright, let’s try that.

Update the editor script to the following:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;
    private string _name = "";
    private Color _color;
    private bool _active = false;

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        EditorGUI.BeginChangeCheck();

        var oldName = _name;

        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Name your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _name = EditorGUILayout.TextField("Name", _name);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Pick a color for your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _color = EditorGUILayout.ColorField("Color", _color);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Is the object(s) available in the scene?", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _active = EditorGUILayout.Toggle("Toggle", _active);

        if(GUILayout.Button("Proceed"))
        {
            GameObjectRename(Selection.gameObjects);
        }

        if(EditorGUI.EndChangeCheck())
        {
            Debug.Log("Value changed from: " + oldName + " to " + _name);
        }
    }

    private void GameObjectRename(GameObject[] objects)
    {
        foreach (var obj in objects)
        {
            obj.name = _name;
        }
    }
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

In the updated code above, we simply cached the old value of our _name variable to oldName. Then, right after the change check, we will check if the old name is the same as the new name.

As you can see from the image above, we have the old value and the new value. Awesome!

Now, the reason why we’ve done the checking it’s because Unity currently doesn’t have a function to tell us which data is being changed. It’s just to give you an idea of how you can cache your old values.

However, the case for the game objects is different.

We have to check if the current name of the game object is not equal to the new name.

Head back to the script and update it to the following:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class CustomUnityEditor : EditorWindow
{
    private float _space = 20f;
    private string _name = "";
    private Color _color;
    private bool _active = false;

    [MenuItem("Custom Editor/Run")]
    public static void CustomEditorWindow()
    {
        GetWindow<CustomUnityEditor>("Custom Unity Editor Window");
    }

    private void OnGUI()
    {
        EditorGUI.BeginChangeCheck();

        var oldName = _name;

        GUILayout.Label("Welcome to your very own editor", EditorStyles.largeLabel);
        GUILayout.Label("This is a label with no styles at all. Feel free it experiment with me and learn how to display user interfaces");

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Name your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _name = EditorGUILayout.TextField("Name", _name);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Pick a color for your object(s)", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _color = EditorGUILayout.ColorField("Color", _color);

        GUILayout.Space(_space);
        GUILayout.Label("Is the object(s) available in the scene?", EditorStyles.boldLabel);
        _active = EditorGUILayout.Toggle("Toggle", _active);

        if(GUILayout.Button("Proceed"))
        {
            GameObjectRename(Selection.gameObjects);
        }

        if(EditorGUI.EndChangeCheck())
        {
            //Debug.Log("Value changed from: " + oldName + " to " + _name);
            GameObjectRename(Selection.gameObjects);
        }
    }

    private void GameObjectRename(GameObject[] objects)
    {
        foreach (var obj in objects)
        {
            if(obj.name != _name)
                obj.name = _name;
        }
    }
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

The update is just super simple. Inside the GameObjectRename() function, we checked if the current value of the game object’s name is equal to the value of _name. If it’s true then we change the name of the game object. Otherwise, don’t.

Going back to Unity should allow you to update the names of the game object without pressing the button.

Conclusion

There you have it! We hope this lesson gave you a bit of a lesson on how to create a custom editor for Unity. We know we have left a few things in this lesson. We’ve seen that this is a long process and so we’ll separate the lesson for the game object colors and other controls.

For now, we hope you enjoyed your reading and we hope you learned from us. However, if you encountered any issues that we haven’t seen, please let us know and we’ll help you as soon as we can.

Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended.

Learn How to Use React Router v5 | React.js Tutorial

8th June 2020

So you have been creating web applications using different programming languages and so far, you are not satisfied with how your application is rendering your web data.

Most applications nowadays are made with only one page and if you’re not familiar with how they’re called, they’re called single-page-applications or SPA, and these applications are mostly made with React and they are often faster compared to web applications like WordPress.

Single-page applications are often using what we call nowadays “routing” or “router” and no, we’re not talking about an internet router but a react-router.

Now the question is…

What is React-Router?

React Router is one of the most powerful and most used routing libraries for React. It is used to navigate through different webpages without making your web browser refresh which makes your application more faster and dynamic.

How to use?

Using react-router is very easy but you need to firstly install it using the following command.

npm install react-router-dom

Now with all that being explained, let’s start by creating a very simple project where we use react-router to navigate through different webpages.

Getting Started

Let’s start by creating a new project. Open your VS code editor and run the following command using the Terminal window.

npx create-react-app routing-app

If you don’t have visual studio code editor, then we suggest installing it to your machine as it will make your development more faster and comfortable.

Download Visual Studio Code

After creating the new react app, we will then have to install the react-router using the following command:

npm install react-router-dom

Once the installation is done, finally run the start command to see your work through your browser.

npm start

Awesome! Now it’s time for us to create the real deal.

Creating Components

The first thing we’re going to do is to modify our App.js file. So open that and update its code to the following.

import React from 'react';
import Nav from './Nav';
import './App.css';

function App() {
  return (
    <div className="App">
      <Nav />
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Saving the code should give you the following error in your browser.

This error happened because we haven’t created the Nav component that we’re trying to import. Let’s do that.

Create a new file and name it Nav.js and apply the following code:

import React from 'react';
import './App.css';

function Nav() {
  return (
    <nav>
        <ul>
            <li>Home</li>
            <li>Blog</li>
            <li>About</li>
        </ul>
    </nav>
  );
}

export default Nav;Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Now if you save the script, you should be able to see in your browser that a list is created.

Awesome! Now let’s created these pages.

Create a new file and name it Home.js. Then, copy the following code:

import React from 'react';
import './App.css';

function Home() {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Homepage</h1>
    </div>
  );
}

export default Home;Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Then, create another new file and name it Blog.js. Then, copy the following code:

import React from 'react';
import './App.css';

function Blog() {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Blog</h1>
    </div>
  );
}

export default Blog;
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Then of course all website have their very own about page so we’ll create a file for that as well. Name it About.js and copy the following code:

import React from 'react';
import './App.css';

function About() {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>About us</h1>
    </div>
  );
}

export default About;Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Awesome! Now we have every page ready.

Now, if we update the code of our App.js to the following, we should be able to see the content of each files that we created.

import React from 'react';
import Nav from './Nav';
import Home from './Home';
import Blog from './Blog';
import About from './About';
import './App.css';

function App() {
  return (
    <div className="App">
      <Nav />
      <Home />
      <Blog />
      <About />
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Like this

However, that’s not what we want to achieve.

We only want to display the blog page if the URL is pointing to the blog page and the same goes to the about page and home page.

This is where react-route can help us.

To use routing, what we need to do is to import BrowserRouter, Route, and Switch from react-router-dom. Then use these components to create route paths throughout our web application.

Let’s update the code of our App.js to the following

import React from 'react';
import Nav from './Nav';
import Home from './Home';
import Blog from './Blog';
import About from './About';
import './App.css';
import { BrowserRouter, Route, Switch } from 'react-router-dom';

function App() {
  return (
    <BrowserRouter>
      <div className="App">
        <Nav />
        <Route path="/" component={Home}/>
        <Route path="/about" component={About}/>
        <Route path="/blog" component={Blog}/>
      </div>
    </BrowserRouter>
  );
}

export default App;
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

To explain the code above, we first imported the components from react-router-dom (BrowserRouter, Route, and Switch).

Then, we used the BrowserRouter and everything that is inside of this component will have the ability to use routing.

We used Route then gave it a path and indicated which component should be displayed once the URL contains the specific path. For example, if we add in the URL /about, the web application should display the about page. The same goes for other routes.

Now you might be wondering, why did we not applied a route to the Nav component? Well, the answer is quite obvious. We will be using the Nav component to navigate from homepage to about page and blog page.

Now if you save the script, you should notice that the about and blog pages are gone. Thanks to route component, the about page will only be displayed once our URL pointed to that specific path.

So if you visit / in your browser. Only the home page will be displayed.

Awesome! Now let’s work for our Nav component because it looks really ugly.

Look for the file App.css and update its code to the following.

.App {
  text-align: center;
}

nav {
  align-items: center;
  background: #123123;
  padding: 20px;
  color: white;
}

nav ul {
  display: flex;
  justify-content: space-around;
  list-style: none;
}

nav ul li {
  font-weight: bold;
}
Code language: CSS (css)

For this stylesheet, we just need to style our navbar so it looks more decent. Later on we might edit this again for the links. We’ll see..

But for now, if you save the stylesheet, you should be able to see that our navbar looks much better.

That looks much better.

The homepage issue

One of the common issues with React-Route is when you visit the blog page, for example, it will also display the homepage.

The reason why this is happening is it basically just checks if the URL contains the specified paths in our application. For the homepage, we have only specified it to display if the URL has /and since there is a / to /blog it will both display the home page and the blog page.

So, how can we fix this?

Fixing this is actually really easy. This is where we’re going to use the Switch component.

If you’re not sure what switch does then just think of it as an if statement. If the path is /blog, then it will just display the blog page.

However, the case for the homepage is different. If we applied the switch component to our application, whenever we open the about page or the blog page, it will only display the homepage and nothing else. That’s why we will be applying the exact attribute for our homepage router.

What the exact attribute will do is it will check if the URL really only has a slash to it. If the URL contains /blog then it will skip the homepage and proceed to the blog page.

So with that being said, let’s update our App.js code to the following:

import React from 'react';
import Nav from './Nav';
import Home from './Home';
import Blog from './Blog';
import About from './About';
import './App.css';
import { BrowserRouter, Route, Switch } from 'react-router-dom';

function App() {
  return (
    <BrowserRouter>
      <div className="App">
        <Nav />
        <Switch>
          <Route path="/" exact component={Home}/>
          <Route path="/about" component={About}/>
          <Route path="/blog" component={Blog}/>
        </Switch>
      </div>
    </BrowserRouter>
  );
}

export default App;
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

If you save your script, you should be able to browse the Blog page without displaying the home page.

The navigation links

Now that we’re done with the components, let’s continue and work for our navigational links. Currently, we have a navbar with items that are not clickable.

Usually, developers who are new to react, they often just add anchor tags to the nav items to make the link work but that’s not the most effective way of navigating through the website.

We’ll be using another component that is very useful and that is the Link component. Don’t worry, we don’t have to install another module because this component is already included in the react-router-dom which is very convenient.

So with that being said, let’s open our Nav.js file and update its code to the following:

import React from 'react';
import './App.css';
import {Link} from 'react-router-dom';

function Nav() {
  return (
    <nav>
        <ul>
            <Link to='/'><li>Home</li></Link>
            <Link to='/blog'><li>Blog</li></Link>
            <Link to='/about'><li>About</li></Link>
        </ul>
    </nav>
  );
}

export default Nav;
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

So for the update above, all we did is we added the link component from the react-router-dom and used it like how you use anchor tags. However, instead of href we use to attribute to point which link we want the navbar item to lead us.

Saving the script should give you the ability to click the navbar items.

However, as you can see from the above image, the links became purple and we can barely see it now.

We can easily fix that by adding styles to it but instead of doing it through the stylesheet, let’s do it directly to our Nav.js.

Open the Nav.js file and update its code to the following:

import React from 'react';
import './App.css';
import {Link} from 'react-router-dom';

function Nav() {
  const navColor = {
    color: 'white'
  };

  return (
    <nav>
        <ul>
            <Link style={navColor} to='/'><li>Home</li></Link>
            <Link style={navColor} to='/blog'><li>Blog</li></Link>
            <Link style={navColor} to='/about'><li>About</li></Link>
        </ul>
    </nav>
  );
}

export default Nav;
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

For the update above, we just simply created a const variable and reference it to the Link component just like how you apply style with classNames, etc.

So with all that being saved, you should be able to finally see the navbar links. Try it and see that your webpage is not loading at all.

Conclusion

And that’s all about it! You can finally create as many routers as you want using React-Router. We hope that this tutorial helped you understand how react-router works and how you can apply it to your web applications. If you are looking for a guide on how to create a responsive navbar using react, feel free to go to our blog page and there you will find a guide on how to make one.

If you have encountered any issues while you’re following this tutorial, feel free to let us know in the comments below and we’d love to help you out as soon as we can.

Unity Tutorials: How To Make a 2D Arrow Projectile

3rd April 2020

It’s quite common for games to have enemies, buildings, weapons, and other items that produce bullets or projectiles.

That’s why game developers who are new to the game development often ask questions like: How do I make a projectile that follows its target?

We’ve seen a lot of different answers to that question and most of them are not as good as what we’re about to show you.

That’s correct! In this tutorial, we’re going to teach you how to make a projectile in 2D that follows its target. Not only that, but we’re also going to show you how you can make it look like an arrow (or ever rocket launcher) that creates an arc without using any Physics!

Although if you are interested in pre-made projectile effects, we highly recommend purchasing Unique Toon Projectiles as it compatible with 3D and 2D games and it is SUPER EASY to customize.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Video Tutorial

Getting Started

Before we start working, it’s important to ensure that the project you’re working on is set up for 2D games. Otherwise, you will encounter issues like camera projections, etc.

If you’re not sure whether you’re using 3D or 2D, you can always check it by navigating to your Project Settings.

Edit menu > Project Settings… > Editor

Unity default behaviour mode changing from 3d to 2d

Once everything is good, then let’s begin.

Let’s create two new 2D sprites and let’s name them Player and Enemy.

Select the two sprites and navigate to your inspector and change the Sprite from none to Knob.

We’ll also scale them up by 5 and separate them in the scene like this.

The player is on the left and the enemy is on the right.

If you like, you can change the color of the two sprites to make it easier for you to determine which one is the player and which one is the enemy.

The next thing we’re going to do is to add tags for both sprites so it will be much easier for our code to get the locations of these game objects.

So to do that, select the Player and go to the inspector and change the value of the Tag from Untagged to Player.

Next, select the Enemy game object. Now, since Unity doesn’t provide an Enemy tag by default, we’re going to create it ourselves so go to the inspector, select the dropdown for Tags and select Add Tag…

This should show you the Tags & Layers window.

Now, under the Tags section, click on the button with a plus sign.

For the New Tag Name, just input Enemy and click Save.

Now select your Enemy game object once again, navigate to your inspector and change the Tag from untagged to Enemy.

Awesome! Now we’re done with the Player and Enemy.

The Projectiles

For the projectiles, we’ll be using the Player as the starting position and the enemy as the target of the projectile.

We’ll be using the following image as our arrow sprite so go ahead and click the download below.

Download

Once you have downloaded the PNG file, go to your project and import it.

Once imported, just simply drag it onto your hierarchy.

Scripting Projectiles

Now that we have the arrow sprite, let’s start working on its script.

Select the Arrow game object and navigate to your inspector and click the Add component button.

Select New Script and name it Arrow.

Then, open the script and copy the following code.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class Arrow : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GameObject player;
    public GameObject target;

    public float speed = 10f;

    public Vector3 movePosition;

    private float playerX;
    private float targetX;
    private float nextX;
    private float dist;
    private float baseY;
    private float height;

    // Start is called before the first frame update
    void Start()
    {
        player = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Player");
        target = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Enemy");
    }

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        playerX = player.transform.position.x;
        targetX = target.transform.position.x;
        dist = targetX - playerX;
        nextX = Mathf.MoveTowards(transform.position.x, targetX, speed * Time.deltaTime);
        baseY = Mathf.Lerp(player.transform.position.y, target.transform.position.y, (nextX - playerX) / dist);
        height = 2 * (nextX - playerX) * (nextX - targetX) / (-0.25f * dist * dist);

        movePosition = new Vector3(nextX, baseY + height, transform.position.z);

        transform.rotation = LookAtTarget(movePosition - transform.position);
        transform.position = movePosition;

        if (movePosition == target.transform.position)
        {
            Destroy(gameObject);
        }
    }

    public static Quaternion LookAtTarget(Vector2 r)
    {
        return Quaternion.Euler(0, 0, Mathf.Atan2(r.y, r.x) * Mathf.Rad2Deg);
    }
}

Code language: C# (cs)

By saving the script and running your game, you should have the following output:

And there you go, that’s how you make an arrow projectile using Unity 2D.

Technically, we’re done with this but let’s customize our script.

Let’s say we wanted to make our arrows go higher. We can do that by declaring another variable and replacing the value inside our height variable.

Let’s update our code to this.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class Arrow : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GameObject player;
    public GameObject target;

    public float speed = 10f;
    public float launchHeight = 2;

    public Vector3 movePosition;

    private float playerX;
    private float targetX;
    private float nextX;
    private float dist;
    private float baseY;
    private float height;

    // Start is called before the first frame update
    void Start()
    {
        player = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Player");
        target = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Enemy");
    }

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        playerX = player.transform.position.x;
        targetX = target.transform.position.x;
        dist = targetX - playerX;
        nextX = Mathf.MoveTowards(transform.position.x, targetX, speed * Time.deltaTime);
        baseY = Mathf.Lerp(player.transform.position.y, target.transform.position.y, (nextX - playerX) / dist);
        height = launchHeight * (nextX - playerX) * (nextX - targetX) / (-0.25f * dist * dist);

        movePosition = new Vector3(nextX, baseY + height, transform.position.z);

        transform.rotation = LookAtTarget(movePosition - transform.position);
        transform.position = movePosition;

        if (movePosition == target.transform.position)
        {
            Destroy(gameObject);
        }
    }

    public static Quaternion LookAtTarget(Vector2 r)
    {
        return Quaternion.Euler(0, 0, Mathf.Atan2(r.y, r.x) * Mathf.Rad2Deg);
    }
}

Code language: C# (cs)

With this new script, you can use this even for catapults or rocket launchers and all you needed to do is to increase the value of launchHeight and decrease the speed to make the rocket launcher more realistic.

There you have it! You have finally created an arrow that arches up to the target.

Obviously, you can always customize the script and add effects when the arrow reaches the target. For example, blood splatter… or an explosion for rocket launchers.

Feel free to do whatever you want!

Conclusion

Like what we mention at the beginning of this tutorial… Arrows, bullets, rockets, etc. they are all pretty common in games. Using the script that we provided, we’re quite confident that you can use it for a long run and customize it very easily.

If you’re looking for more 2D related tutorials, you can always head to our Game Development blog page and read more.

Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended.

How To Make Premium WordPress Theme Header (Tutorial)

6th December 2019

Greetings! Welcome to another part of the Premium WordPress Theme development tutorial series. In this lesson, we’re going to learn how to create the header for our premium WordPress theme.

If you remember, last time we have set up our Premium WordPress theme using Local by Flywheel. We have created the basic boilerplate HTML for our index, header, and footer. We have also added a screenshot for our theme so it will display in our dashboard how the theme will look like once activated.

Join FlyWheel for FREE and get a free SSL Certificate to keep your site secure!

Sign up for free

If in case you haven’t followed our first tutorial, we highly recommend you to catch up first before proceeding to this part.

Read: Getting Started for Premium WordPress Theme 101

Getting Started

In this second part of our Premium WordPress tutorial series, we’re going to start taking a look at how we can implement custom CSS and JavaScript, and properly include them in our theme.

We’re going to learn how to use the functions.php file on WordPress, which is one of the most powerful files in WordPress.

Custom CSS & JavaScript

Let’s start by making two new folders inside our project, and name it css and js. This is where we’re going to store our CSS files and JavaScript files.

Then inside the css folder, create a new CSS file and name it style.css.

html, body {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
}Code language: CSS (css)

And then inside the js folder, create a new JavaScript file and name it script.js.

//Let's make our script.js empty for nowCode language: JSON / JSON with Comments (json)

Our file structure should look something like this.

Save all your scripts.

The Functions File

Now, let’s create the functions.php file so go back to your code editor, if you’re using Sublime, just press CTRL + N and CTRL + S to save, and name it functions.php.

Keep in mind that the file name is plural, with an s.

Inside the functions.php file, we want to create a function or at least use a function that will allow us to include our CSS file in our header and JavaScript file in our footer.

For now, let’s create a function that will load all of the scripts required by our theme like jQuery, Bootstrap, our script, etc.

<?php

function esquela_scripts_enqueue() {

}

?>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

If you look at your footer.php file, you will see that there are scripts that are being referenced by our footer.

Footer PHP file with jQuery and Bootstrap

What we’re going to do is to remove all the scripts from our footer, but copy all the URLs and paste it in our functions.php file. However, we’re going to change the URL for the jQuery since bootstrap is only using the slim version of jQuery.

We’ll end up with something like this:

<?php

function esquela_scripts_enqueue() {
	//https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.4.1.min.js
	//https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.14.7/umd/popper.min.js
	//https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/js/bootstrap.min.js
}

?>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Next, we’re going to register all the links using the WordPress function wp_register_script() and then we’ll enqueue them next using wp_enqueue_script().

We should end up with something like this by now:

<?php

function esquela_scripts_enqueue() {
	wp_register_script( 'jQuery', 'https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.4.1.min.js', array(), 1, true );
	wp_enqueue_script( 'jQuery' );

	wp_register_script( 'Popper', 'https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.14.7/umd/popper.min.js', array(), 1, true );
	wp_enqueue_script( 'Popper' );

	wp_register_script( 'Bootstrap', 'https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/js/bootstrap.min.js', array(), 1, true );
	wp_enqueue_script( 'Bootstrap' );

	wp_register_script( 'Esquela', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/script.js', array(), 1, true );
	wp_enqueue_script( 'Esquela' );
}

?>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Coding Reference

If in case you don’t know the functions that we used above, you can always refer to the following.

wp_register_script()

Description: A WordPress function that registers a script to be enqueued later by another WordPress function wp_enqueue_script().

Parameters:

`$handle`	(string) (Required) The name of the script and should always be unique.
`$src`	(string\|bool) (Required) The full URL of the script, or path of the script relative to the WordPress root directory. If the source is set to false, the script is an alias of other scripts it depends on.
`$deps`	(array) (Optional) An array of registered script handles this script depends on. Default value: array()
`$ver`	(string\|bool\|null) (Optional) A string specifying the script version number, if it has one, which is added to the URL as a query string for cache busting purposes. If version is set to false, a version number is automatically added equal to current installed WordPress version. If set to null, no version is added. Default value: false
`$in_footer`	(bool) (Optional) Whether to enqueue the script before </body> instead of in the <head>. Default ‘false’. Default value: false

wp_enqueue_script()

Description: Registers the script if the $src is provided (does NOT overwrite), and enqueues it.

Parameters:

`$handle`	(string) (Required) The name of the script and should always be unique.
`$src`	(string\|bool) (Required) The full URL of the script, or path of the script relative to the WordPress root directory. If the source is set to false, the script is an alias of other scripts it depends on.
`$deps`	(array) (Optional) An array of registered script handles this script depends on. Default value: array()
`$ver`	(string\|bool\|null) (Optional) A string specifying the script version number, if it has one, which is added to the URL as a query string for cache busting purposes. If version is set to false, a version number is automatically added equal to current installed WordPress version. If set to null, no version is added. Default value: false
`$in_footer`	(bool) (Optional) Whether to enqueue the script before </body> instead of in the <head>. Default ‘false’. Default value: false

Awesome! Now that we have created a dedicated function for our scripts, let’s actually enqueue our scripts using the add_action() function.

So right underneath our esquela_scripts_enqueue() function, type in, add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'esquela_scripts_enqueue');

Our functions.php file should have the following:

<?php

function esquela_scripts_enqueue() {
	wp_register_script( 'jQuery', 'https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.4.1.min.js', array(), 1, true );
	wp_enqueue_script( 'jQuery' );

	wp_register_script( 'Popper', 'https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.14.7/umd/popper.min.js', array(), 1, true );
	wp_enqueue_script( 'Popper' );

	wp_register_script( 'Bootstrap', 'https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/js/bootstrap.min.js', array(), 1, true );
	wp_enqueue_script( 'Bootstrap' );

	wp_register_script( 'Esquela', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/script.js', array(), 1, true );
	wp_enqueue_script( 'Esquela' );
}

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'esquela_scripts_enqueue');

?>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Next, let’s open our header.php file once again and add the following code inside the <head> tag.

<?php wp_head(); ?>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Then, let’s open our footer.php file and add the following code just before the closing body tag.

<?php wp_footer(); ?>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Save all of your scripts and head to your website. You should see the following results in your browser inspector.

Importing CSS and JS files with WordPress Enqueue functions

As you can see, our theme started including the scripts that we listed in our functions.php file. Not only that, but it also added the meta tags that are required for every WordPress theme which is great!

That’s how you load your javascript in WordPress.

Now.

What about CSS stylesheets? How do you import them?

The answer is fairly easy and the way you do that is quite similar to how you import your scripts. The only difference is the functions that we’re going to use and that is the wp_register_style() function and wp_enqueue_style() function.

Let’s create a new function and we’ll name it esquela_style_enqueue().

function esquela_style_enqueue() {
	
}Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Go to your header.php file and remove the Bootstrap CSS file that is being referenced.

Then, go back to functions.php file and update your esquela_style_enqueue() function to the following:

function esquela_style_enqueue() {
	wp_register_style('Bootstrap', 'https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/css/bootstrap.min.css', array(), 1, 'all');
	wp_enqueue_style('Bootstrap');

	wp_register_style('Esquela', get_template_directory_uri() . '/css/style.css', array(), 1.2, 'all');
	wp_enqueue_style('Esquela');
}

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'esquela_style_enqueue');Code language: PHP (php)

Save all your scripts and you should have the following results.

Great! now all of our files are being loaded.

Now that we finally understand how the functions work, let’s add another resource to our theme. Since we need icons, we’re gonna need Font Awesome.

So go ahead to Font Awesome, login to your account, go to your kit, and copy the URL of the script.

Next, go back to your functions.php file and add the following code inside your esquela_scripts_enqueue() function.

wp_register_script( 'FontAwesome', 'https://kit.fontawesome.com/YOUR_FONTAWESOME_KIT_NAME.js', array(), 1, true );
wp_enqueue_script( 'FontAwesome' );Code language: PHP (php)

Save all your scripts!

WordPress Theme Header

Now that we’re done with the functions, let’s proceed to our theme and design our header.

Open your header.php file once again, and add the following code just below the opening body tag.

<header id="es-header">
	<div class="logo" id="logo">Esquela</div>
	<nav>
		<ul class="menu">
			<li><a class="nav-links" href="#">Home</a></li>
			<li><a class="nav-links" href="#">About</a></li>
			<li><a class="nav-links" href="#">Menu</a></li>
			<li><a class="nav-links" href="#">Contact</a></li>
		</ul>
		<ul class="social">
			<li><a href="#"><i class="fab fa-instagram"></i></a></li>
			<li><a href="#"><i class="fab fa-facebook-f"></i></a></li>
			<li><a href="#"><i class="fab fa-twitter"></i></a></li>
			<li><a href="#"><i class="fab fa-whatsapp"></i></a></li>
		</ul>
	</nav>
	<div class="menu-toggle" id="toggle"><i class="fas fa-bars"></i></div>
</header>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Awesome! Now let’s style our header with CSS.

Open your main.css file inside the css folder and copy the following CSS code.

header {
	padding: 25px 100px;
	background: #3952a6;
	width: 100%;
	box-sizing: border-box;
	z-index: 99;
	transition: .5s;
	height: 100px;
}

header .logo {
	color: #fff;
	height: 50px;
	line-height: 50px;
	float: left;
	font-size: 25px;
	font-weight: bold;
	transition: .5s;
}

header nav {
	float: right;
}

header nav ul {
	margin: 0 50px;
	padding: 0;
	display: inline-flex;
}

header nav ul li {
	list-style: none;
}

header nav ul li a {
	position: relative;
	font-size: 15px;
	height: 50px;
	line-height: 50px;
	padding: 0 20px;
	color: #fff;
	text-decoration: none;
	display: block;
	transition: .5s;
	text-transform: uppercase;
}

.social li {
	background: #fff;
	border-radius: 50%;
	margin: 0 5px;
}

.social li a {
	position: relative;
	color: #3952a6;
	font-size: 15px;
	width: 25px;
	height: 25px;
	padding: 5px;
	line-height: 5px;
	text-decoration: none;
	display: block;
	transition: .5s;
	text-align: center;
}

.menu-toggle {
	color: #fff;
	float: right;
	line-height: 50px;
	font-size: 25px;
	cursor: pointer;
	display: none;
	transition: 0.5s;
}
@media screen and (max-width: 1027px) {
	header {
		padding: 20px 40px;
	}
}

@media screen and (max-width: 991px) {
	.menu-toggle {
		display: block;
	}

	header nav {
		position: absolute;
		width: 100%;
		height: calc(100vh - 50px);
		background: #333;
		top: 90px;
		left: -100%;
		transition: 0.5s;
	}

	header nav.active {
		left: 0;
	}

	header nav ul {
		display: block;
		text-align: center;
	}

	.social {
		margin-top: 20px;
		display: inline;
	}

	.social li {
		margin: 20px 0;
		background: none;
	}

	.social li a {
		width: 100%;
		font-size: 50px;
		text-align: center;
		border: none;
		height: auto;
		color: #1f1e1e;
	}

	header nav ul a {
		border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0, .2);
	}
}

@media screen and (max-width: 580px) {
	header {
		padding: 20px 30px;
	}

	.body-m {
		padding-top: 110px;
		padding-left: 10px;
		padding-right: 10px; 
	}
}Code language: CSS (css)

Save your files! You should have the following results for desktop.

WordPress Esquela Theme Premium Header tutorial

And for mobile, you should end up with the following.

WordPress Esquela Theme Premium Responsive Header tutorial

Awesome! But we’re not done yet! If you try to click the menu bar, our links and socials will never show up.

So what do we do? Of course, we’ll use JavaScript to display our menu.

So go ahead to your files, open your js folder and open the script.js file.

Then copy the following code:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('.menu-toggle').on('click', function(e) {
        $('nav').toggleClass('active');
    });
});Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Save all your files.

You should end up with the following result when you click the menu button.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully learned not only how to use functions.php file but also how to create a responsive premium theme header for WordPress.

In the next tutorial, we’re going to learn how to create a hero banner with image and header texts.

For now, we would like to thank you for reading this post. If you think you have learned something from us, let us know below in the comments, we really love hearing from you!

If you have questions or maybe a request, contact us or comment below and we’ll reply to you as soon as we can.

About us

Our origins

WeeklyHow started as a blog for sharing programming lessons and also a way for Bernard, to get online clients. Somewhere in the middle of 2019, we decided to make our niche focus on Shopify Development, Game Development (a little), and E-Commerce. We started removing all of the content that is not related to our current niche to ensure that readers can find what they need. One of our goals is to give everyone the ability to create extraordinary applications.

The year 2020 is such a challenging year yet we decided to move forward and improve our platform to give lessons to our readers. right now, you’re not just going to read tutorials, you’re going to learn with us through our courses, quizzes, and QnA.

Everyone deserves to have the best experience when it comes to learning and that’s why we’re here to provide you that experience.

For partnership and business development inquiries, please email us at contact@weeklyhow.com

Shopify Draggable Tutorial: How to Drag and Drop in Shopify

3rd September 2019

It’s quite popular these days to interact with everything through mobile devices. Tapping, swiping, dragging things up and down, or even zooming in and out. All of these are possible with mobile devices.

Now, the problem arises, can all of these actions be done as well by desktop computers? Technically yes but most of the time no. Besides, it all depends on the capability of your display if it can do such actions like touch-screen.

But what if your desktop doesn’t have touch-screen features? Can you still drag or swipe? Maybe with the cursor instead?

100% yes! Thanks to Shopify Draggable, you can drag and drop web objects easily without too much programming.

So without further ado, let’s get started

What is Shopify Draggable

Shopify Draggable is a drag & drop library that allows developers to build interactive objects for users to drag from one place into another. For example, users can drag a product into the trash for deletion.

Shopify Draggable is also extensible which means if you have enough technical skills you can extend this library into something more useful. For instance, drag and popup or “drag and drop to see your prize!“.

Features

Unfortunately, Shopify Draggable is no longer being maintained by its original developers. However, this library could still give you the following features:

Drag & drop by mouse / touch
Extendable dragging behaviour
Extendable drag detection

Installing Shopify Draggable

What we liked about Shopify draggable is that it could easily be installed in many ways. For example, if you are using Laravel for Shopify Development then you can just run the following code.

npm install @shopify/draggable --save
Code language: CSS (css)

If you’re using yarn then

yarn add @shopify/draggable
Code language: CSS (css)

On the other hand, if you want to use their CDN directly. You can use one of the following script tags

<!-- Entire bundle -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@shopify/draggable@1.0.0-beta.8/lib/draggable.bundle.js"></script>

<!-- legacy bundle for older browsers (IE11) -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@shopify/draggable@1.0.0-beta.8/lib/draggable.bundle.legacy.js"></script>

<!-- Draggable only -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@shopify/draggable@1.0.0-beta.8/lib/draggable.js"></script>

<!-- Sortable only -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@shopify/draggable@1.0.0-beta.8/lib/sortable.js"></script>

<!-- Droppable only -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@shopify/draggable@1.0.0-beta.8/lib/droppable.js"></script>

<!-- Swappable only -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@shopify/draggable@1.0.0-beta.8/lib/swappable.js"></script>

<!-- Plugins only -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@shopify/draggable@1.0.0-beta.8/lib/plugins.js"></script>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Browser Compatibility

If you are worried about this library not being compatible with all of the versions of the popular browsers then worry not! Because Shopify Draggable is compatible with:

Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Internet Explorer
Microsoft Edge
Opera
Safari

Examples

Whenever you use Shopify Draggable, it is important to remember that draggable objects must be inside a container or element.

Also, we’re going to use this library without any frameworks which mean pure HTML is what we only needed. This way, it’ll be much easier for you to understand how this library works.

Don’t worry, we’ll be guiding you step by step on how to use Shopify Draggable.

First, let’s create an empty HTML file.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
	<head>
		<meta charset="utf-8">
		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
		<style>

		</style>
	</head>
	<body>

	</body>
	<script type="text/javascript">

	</script>
</html>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Next, let’s import the library using CDN.

Add the following line inside the head tag.

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@shopify/draggable@1.0.0-beta.2/lib/draggable.min.js"></script>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Now that we have the library installed, let’s create the objects that we can drag.

Inside the body tag, copy the following code.

<div class="block">
	<div class="droppable draggable-dropzone--occupied">
		<div class="draggable"></div>
	</div>
</div>

<div class="block">
	<div class="droppable"></div>
</div>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

In the code example above, we have declared three div classes and that is the block class, droppable class, and the draggable class.

Block Class

Take note that we called this “block” class because the above code, more specifically the div tag has a class of block. You can always change this class to whatever name you want as long as you specify that class in the javascript which we’ll do in a few moments.

Block class is where you can create all of the droppable objects. To simply explain this. All droppable elements must have their own parent block class like what the example above has.

Droppable Class

This class is used for objects to be dropped into. So for example, you have one draggable object. You can drag this object into this section with droppable class.

Keep in mind that the size of draggable objects MUST be equal to the size of the droppable objects.

And again, you can rename this class to whatever you want as long as you specify this in your javascript.

Draggable Class

This class will make any elements draggable and can be dropped onto any element with the class of droppable. Same with the rest, you can rename this class to whatever you want… and… of course specify it in the javascript. (We really love repeating ourselves, don’t we?)

Let’s continue

Inside the script tag, copy the following code.

const containers = document.querySelectorAll('.block')

const droppable = new Draggable.Droppable(containers, {
  draggable: '.draggable',
  droppable: '.droppable'
});

droppable.on('drag:start', () => console.log('drag:start'));
droppable.on('droppable:over', () => console.log('droppable:over'));
droppable.on('droppable:out', () => console.log('droppable:out'));
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

The above code is written in Javascript ES6. So make sure you copy this code inside the script tags.

To explain the above code, we firstly declared a constant variable and we called it containers. Then we select all elements with the class of block.

Currently, we have to two div elements with a class of block so that’s what the variable will look for.

Next, we declare a new droppable object and target all the available blocks that can be used by draggable objects and then we assign which element is draggable and droppable.

After that, we initialize the events:

drag:start
droppable:over
droppable:out

And then make a callback where we display in the console which event is currently happening.

Like we have mentioned before, it is important to give your objects their specified sizes to ensure that they will fit in their designated sections.

To do this, copy the following code inside the style tag.

.grid {
	display: grid;
	grid-template: 150px 150px 150px / 150px 150px 150px 150px;
	grid-gap: 10px;
	background-color: #ffffff;
	padding: 10px;
}
.draggable {
	background-color: #ff3946;
	box-shadow: 10px 10px 10px #7777;
}

.draggable, .droppable.draggable-dropzone--occupied{
	width: 100px; 
	height: 100px; 
}
.droppable{
	width: 100px; 
	height: 100px;
	border: solid;
	display: flex;
}
Code language: CSS (css)

The code above will only give our objects a little bit of style which doesn’t actually matter but since we need to give our objects a width then might as well give it a style.

If you have noticed, we have a new class at the top of this CSS which is the .grid class.

This class does not matter as well, but this will organize our grid especially if we want to add more droppable sections on our page.

Let’s go back to our HTML and modify what’s inside the body tag:

<div class="grid">
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable draggable-dropzone--occupied">
			<div class="draggable"></div>
		</div>
	</div>

	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
</div>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

What we changed in our body tag is we simply added the grid class and then inserted our blocks inside of it.

We’re almost done!

Go save your file as index.html and open that file in your browser.

You should see something like this:

Shopify Draggable Tutorial - How to Drag and Drop Objects From One Place to Another

You may drag the red block into the empty block. You may also put it back into its place.

Now, what if you want to add more empty blocks for the draggable object?

The answer is very simple.

Just duplicate the block for the droppable object like below:

<div class="grid">
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable draggable-dropzone--occupied">
			<div class="draggable"></div>
		</div>
	</div>

	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="block">
		<div class="droppable"></div>
	</div>
</div>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

This will give you the following output:

Shopify Draggable - Drag and Drop Features for Shopify Developers

Conclusion

There you go! You have finally developed a simple web page where an object can be dragged and dropped into different blocks.

What we really liked about this library is the fact that you don’t need to use jquery to make this library work. Not only that. It is ridiculously fast and lightweight.

I highly recommend you to experiment with this library. As we said before, this library is extensible meaning you can add more features to it.

If you want us to write more about Shopify Draggable library, let us know in the comments below and let us know as well your reactions by clicking one of the emojis below.

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