Catalog availability data

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Availability item example

An availability determines whether a given customer can purchase a given product or variant. An availability can be a store inventory, a price list, or anything that controls which user has access to certain products or variants.

Note

A customer’s ability to buy a specific product or variant is determined by the structure of your catalog entity. If your catalog entity exclusively includes product items, your customers will purchase these products. However, if your catalog entity contains variants, customers will purchase variant items, which represent specific sellable versions of the products.

Availability item example

If you’re trying to sell a Coveo Soccer Shoes - Red that has two size variants, Coveo Soccer Shoes - Red ; Size 8 and Coveo Soccer Shoes - Red ; Size 9, the JSON of the items may look like the following:

Note

In your catalog data, some of the fields discussed here, such as ec_product_id, ec_variant_id, ec_availability_id, and ec_available_items, may have different keys.

{
  "documentId": "product://001-red",
  "ec_name": "Coveo Soccer Shoes - Red",
  "ec_product_id": "001-red",
  "objecttype": "Product",
  "ec_images": ["https://myimagegallery?productid"],
}

Similarly, the following JSON samples showcase the variant items:

{
  "documentId": "variant://001-red-size-8",
  "ec_name": "Coveo Soccer Shoes - Red ; Size 8",
  "ec_product_id": "001-red",
  "objecttype": "Variant",
  "ec_variant_id": "001-red-size-8",
}

{
  "documentId": "variant://001-red-size-9",
  "ec_name": "Coveo Soccer Shoes - Red ; Size 9",
  "ec_product_id": "001-red",
  "objecttype": "Variant",
  "ec_variant_id": "001-red-size-9",
}

Given the product and its variants, you can create an item to represent availability where a local store contains a finite amount of products:

{
  "documentId": "store://s000001", 
  "ec_name": "Montreal Store",
  "lat": 45.4975,
  "long": -73.5687,
  "ec_availability_id": "s000001", 
  "objecttype": "Availability", 
  "ec_available_items": ["001-red-size-8","001-red-size-9"], 
}

The preceding JSON has generic information about the store location (lat and long) and name (ec_name).

The value of the documentId metadata is the unique identifier of your item in the index and will also serve as the item’s uri field value. This value is essential to update the item’s information in the index.

The ec_availability_id metadata uniquely identifies each availability channel or price list.

The objecttype metadata is crucial in identifying the item as an availability channel in the index.

The ec_available_items metadata defines which variants or products are available through a given channel.

Note

Depending on the way you’ve structured your data, your availability metadata might be contained in another source. Refer to Leverage variants and availabilities for more information.

If an item of the availability catalog object has more than 1,000 items listed in the ec_available_items field, we recommend that the related items (product or variant) also contain the ec_available_items field.

The value must be formatted as an array, but contain only one item, which is the unique identifier of the item, as shown in the following code samples. This will improve the performance of your index.

Availability:

{
  "documentId": "store://montreal",
  "FileExtension": ".html",
  "ec_name": "Montreal Store",
  "ec_available_items": ["001-red-8_wide", "001-red-7-narrow", "..."],
  "objecttype": "Availability"
}

Related variant:

{
  "documentId": "variant://001-red-8_wide",
  "FileExtension": ".html",
  "ec_name": "Coveo Soccer Shoes - Red / Size 8 - Wide",
  "ec_variant_id": "001-red-8_wide",
  "ec_available_items": ["001-red-8_wide"],
  "productsize": "8",
  "width": "wide",
  "ec_product_id": "001-red",
  "objecttype": "Variant"
}

Returning availability information

Similarly to variants, users are presented with various displayable products. However, they select a variant or product from a specific availability channel when purchasing.

Akin to how variant information can be used to refine and filter search results, availability data can be used in a similar manner. For instance, once a product has been identified in search results, a user might want to refine the results based on availability, displaying only those products available in a particular store or within a specific price list. This is where availability data can help guide and enhance the search experience by providing meaningful filtering capabilities.

Metadata keys defined in availabilities can be used for filtering with facets, but can’t be used for sorting results.

If you wish to showcase availability information on the product itself, you can store this data as a dictionary on the product item. For example, if you only wish to show products that can be shipped to the postal code the user lives in, your availability information needs to appear on the product.

See Leverage variants and availabilities on how to achieve this.