Catalogs
A catalog contains the products available for sale in your store. A catalog also contains information about how to organize those products for navigation menus and search facets in a shopper experience.
Catalogs with EP Product Experience Manager (PXM)
When using the Product Experience Manager (EP PXM) feature, before you create a catalog you define the following resources:
- Hierarchies - hierarchies and nodes for all the ways that you can categorize the products.
- Products - product information, associated assets, and links to hierarchy nodes.
- Price Books - prices for the products associated with the hierarchies.
A catalog is a combination of hierarchies and a price book.
Hierarchies
The hierarchies determine which products appear in the catalog, that is, only the products that are associated with the selected hierarchies are included in the catalog. You can also specify the order you want your hierarchies to display in a published catalog. You can order your hierarchies on a catalog-by-catalog basis.
For more information, see Update a Catalog.
Understanding How Products And Nodes Are Associated
You can use breadcrumb metadata to understand how products and nodes are associated. This is useful if you want to improve how your shoppers search your store.
There are two different types of breadcrumb metadata. The type of breadcrumb metadata that you see depends on whether the endpoint you are using is with a product or a node.
- To see how products are associated with nodes, use:
bread_crumbsmetadata. Thebread_crumbsmetadata to see a tree of parent nodes and how products are associated with the parent nodes. If your products are all in a hierarchy root node, nobread_crumbsmetadata is generated.bread_crumb_nodesmetadata to see a list of parent nodes a product is associated with.
- To see the parent nodes that a node is associated with, use
bread_crumbmetadata. Thebread_crumbmetadata lists the parent nodes that the node is associated with.
Understanding bread_crumbs metadata for products
An example of bread_crumbs metadata is shown below.
{
“data”: {
“type”: “product”,
“attributes”: {
/*** other product attributes ommitted ***/
"bread_crumbs": {
"04e748f1-83db-4013-85c8-9edfb0e1b5fa": [
"e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52",
"94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de"
],
"a96a898b-444c-40b6-9c27-5fc74d08e685": [
"e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52"
]
}
}
}
}
The following diagram illustrates how the parent nodes are listed in the bread_crumbs example above.
- The product is in Node 2. The ID for Node 2 is shown first in the first set of breadcrumbs.
- Node 2 is part of Hierarchy 1. The ID for Hierarchy 1 is shown second.
- Node 1 is the parent node of Node 2. The ID for Node 1 is shown last.
- The product is also in Node 3. The ID for Node 3 is shown first in the second set of breadcrumbs.
- Node 3 is in the root of Hierarchy 1. The ID for Hierarchy 1 is shown last.
In the bread_crumb_nodes metadata, you can see a list of parent nodes a product is associated with. If you subsequently add a product to a new node, then the bread_crumb_nodes metadata appends the new node to the top of the list. Using the example above, if we add the product to Node 1:
- The
bread_crumb_nodesmetadata is generated to show the new node appended to the top of the list. - The
bread_crumbsmetadata is updated with the new node.
{
“data”: {
“type”: “product”,
“attributes”: {
/*** other product attributes ommitted ***/
"bread_crumb_nodes": [
"94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de",
"04e748f1-83db-4013-85c8-9edfb0e1b5fa",
"a96a898b-444c-40b6-9c27-5fc74d08e685"
],
"bread_crumbs": {
"04e748f1-83db-4013-85c8-9edfb0e1b5fa": [
"e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52",
"94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de"
],
"94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de": [
"e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52"
],
"a96a898b-444c-40b6-9c27-5fc74d08e685": [
"e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52"
]
}
}
}
}
Understanding bread_crumb metadata for nodes
An example of bread_crumb metadata is shown below.
{
“data”: {
“type”: “product”,
“attributes”: {
/*** other product attributes ommitted ***/
{
"bread_crumb": [
"04e748f1-83db-4013-85c8-9edfb0e1b5fa",
"94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de",
"a96a898b-444c-40b6-9c27-5fc74d08e685"
]
}
}
}
}
The following diagram illustrates how the nodes are listed in the bread_crumb example above.
The bread_crumb metadata is an array of nodes that the node is associated with.
Pricebooks
A price book contains the prices for each of the products in the catalog. You can create multiple price books for different scenarios, such as seasonal sales, business versus retail customer pricing, and reward programs. If you have multiple price books, when a catalog is published, you can configure a priority for your price books. Product prices are displayed in the catalog according to the priority of the price books. See Create a catalog.
Publishing catalogs
Use catalog rules to schedule a catalog to appear during a particular date and time, such as a seasonal catalog. The catalog may have different pricing than the other catalogs. You can have multiple published catalogs.
When a catalog is ready to be used in a store, you publish it. You can create and publish catalogs for different contexts and channels. You can see the differences between the last 2 consecutive catalog releases. See Publish a catalog.
You retrieve catalogs for your shopper experience by using the Catalog View API.
Catalogs with v2 Product resources
While catalogs were designed for use with Product Experience Manager (EP PXM)services, you can use the Catalog View API to retrieve v2 Product resources. For example, you may not want to migrate v2/products to pcm/products resources, but you want to speed up requests for products. In this case, you can use the read-only Catalog View service to retrieve the products.
The returned products are in the form of the v2 Product object, which includes prices. The returned v2 Brands, Collections, and Categories are structured into separate hierarchies. For example, the v2 Brand resources appear in a single Brand hierarchy where the nodes have the same names as the Brand resources.
Related concepts
- Product Experience Manager (EP PXM)
- EP PXM Products
- EP PXM Hierarchies
- EP PXM Price Books
- Catalog Rules