Custom Product Input Fields: Sanity Guide vs Portable Text for Cart Data

No, this guide isn't what you need! I can see why there's confusion here, so let me clarify:

What that guide is for: The custom input guide is about creating custom fields inside Sanity Studio (your content management interface) that pull data from external APIs. It's for content editors managing products in Sanity, not for customers on your storefront.

What you actually need: You're trying to add custom product options (text, colors, customizations) on your customer-facing product pages and pass that data through checkout. This is entirely frontend/e-commerce platform work, not a Sanity Studio customization.

Here's what you should do instead:

If you're using Shopify:

• Look into Shopify line item properties - this lets customers add custom text/options that get passed to cart and checkout
• You'd add custom input fields to your product template, then those values attach to the cart item

If you're using WooCommerce:

• Search for "WooCommerce custom product fields" or look at plugins like WooCommerce Product Add-Ons
• You'll add custom fields to your product page that save as order item meta data

Where Sanity fits in: Sanity would store your product information (name, price, description, images), but the customization inputs and cart functionality happen in your frontend code and e-commerce platform. After purchase, you could use Sanity Functions to receive order data via webhook and save it to Sanity, or just have it emailed to you through your e-commerce platform's built-in order notifications.

Portable Text is also not what you need - that's for rich text content editing in Sanity Studio.

You're looking at backend CMS customization when you need frontend e-commerce development. Hope this saves you some time!