Product Catalog Programming Concepts
The Commerce Server product catalog objects are described in the following topics.
Catalog System Object Model
CatalogManager Object
ProductCatalog Object
Product Object
Category Object
CatalogSets Object
CatalogToVendorAssociation Object
Catalog System Object Model
The CatalogManager object is the foundation of the catalog system object model. You use the CatalogManager object to create and manage the ProductCatalog, Category, and Product objects in the system. The CatalogSets and CatalogToVendorAssociation objects are managed outside of the object model.
The CatalogManager object manages one or more catalogs, represented by ProductCatalog objects. A catalog may consist of a flat list of products or it may have a hierarchy of categories in which to organize the products. Each Category object represents a node in this hierarchy and contains products or other categories.
The CatalogManager object also manages a collection of properties. These properties are used to define the attributes of the objects in the Product Catalog System. Appropriate properties must be created before the CatalogManager object can create any other objects.
CatalogManager Object
The CatalogManager object is the first object you create to use the Commerce Server 2000 Product Catalog System. Typically, a single CatalogManager object is created in the global.asa file and used throughout an application. This object sets and retrieves properties that apply to all the catalogs in the Product Catalog System. Use the CatalogManager object to create and manage catalogs. You also use the CatalogManager object to create properties, define their attributes, and to create product and category definitions using those properties. The CatalogManager object also provides methods for queries and free text searches across single or multiple catalogs.
The CatalogManager.CreateCatalog and CatalogManager.GetCatalog methods return a ProductCatalog object representing a specific catalog. The CatalogManager.Catalogs property is a recordset of all the catalogs in the Product Catalog System.
ProductCatalog Object
The ProductCatalog object represents a single catalog in the Product Catalog System. All of the methods of the ProductCatalog object are executed from the context of a specific catalog. You use the ProductCatalog object to add new products and categories to a catalog, to create a custom catalog, or to perform a specification search.
The ProductCatalog.RootCategories method returns a recordset of categories that is the starting point for traversing the category hierarchy. Similarly the ProductCatalog.RootProducts method returns a recordset of products that are not in a category hierarchy.
Product Object
The Product object represents a single product or product family in the catalog. A product definition is created using the CatalogManager object and can be used across the Product Catalog System, but a product is always in the context of a single catalog. Use the Product object to perform operations on a product, such as modifying properties, creating product variants, or managing relationships.
Category Object
The Category object represents a single category in the catalog. Categories provide a method for organizing products within a catalog. Use this object to perform various operations on a category, such as adding products or other categories, or managing relationships.
The Category.ChildCategories property is a recordset containing the names of categories that exist below this category in the hierarchy. The Category.Products property is a recordset containing all the products that exist directly in this category.
CatalogSets Object
The CatalogSets object stores and manages catalog sets, which are arbitrary collections of catalogs. Catalog sets allow you to present different collections of catalogs to different users and organizations.
CatalogToVendorAssociation Object
The CatalogToVendorAssociation object stores and manages associations between catalogs and vendors (suppliers).
See Also
Example Code for Product Catalog Objects