Introduction
The document describes the concept for the site preview of products. The site preview started in the back office can be done for a selected date and with a configuration to show all products (online and/or enabled).
Preview Configuration
Preview configuration parameters will be accessed using a provider: ProductConfigurationProvider. This provider defines extension points for several attribute configurations.
The implementation of the provider maps configuration values from preview user interface to "technical" attributes.
UI Configuration | Technical Attribute | Used in method |
|---|---|---|
Preview date |
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|
Make all products visible |
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Make all products visible |
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Make all products available |
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The extension implementation of the attribute configuration gets configuration values from the preview context.
- Date/Time
- It determines whether the current date or a fixed date specified by the user is used for the preview.
- Below is the configuration panel used for storefront preview for date/time configuration.
- Make all products visible
- Selecting that checkbox allows the user to see all products including offline and not available.
- Make all products available
- Selecting that checkbox allows the user to see all products which are out of stock(no inventory) and not available because of
LastOrderDateand/orEndOfLifeDate.
- Selecting that checkbox allows the user to see all products which are out of stock(no inventory) and not available because of
Preview Date - ProductOnlineDate
The "Preview Date" set by the user in the "Design View" configuration is used for the product online date, products last order date and end of life date.
Make all products visible/available
This setting influences if product(s) "Online" and "In Stock" flags are considered for the preview or not.
It also influences if product(s) last order date and end of life date is used to change its online state for preview.
Code Changed for Preview to Work
In order to make the preview configuration take the preview settings into account, several Java classes and database queries were changed.
It checks first if an individual preview configuration is...Active() and then does get...Value() to get its active value. ("..." stands for the preview configuration parameter name).
To make the preview parameter available in the queries the class ProductConfigurationQueryProcessor is used.
It provides an easy access to the configured preview parameters in the queries changed.
API
Description
The DefaultProductConfigurationProvider class provides default values for Java extensions methods. It checks if an extension implementation is available; if not, the default value is returned. The default values simulate the standard shop behavior.
The extension implementation is done in sld_preview and therefore only available if cartridge sld_preview is assigned to the application. This makes it easy to deactivate the preview functionality for a certain server (e.g. live system) by not assigning the sld_preview cartridge to a application.
For each parameter which influences the preview behavior there is a Java extension(xcs) and a Java extension implementation(sld_preview).
Classes - Diagram
