Overview

OAV mechanism works especially well when applied to product data modelling. Different product types can be modelled to have various attributes which can be shared or be unique to specific products. The mechanism is very generic and is fully controlled from Admin app providing generic no-coding required approach to business functions such as filtered navigation, search, product specification view and product comparison. For detailed discussion of the topic see Product information management (PIM).

Attribute groups

Attribute groups specify attributes that belong to specific extensible object in the system. This grouping is done for better management of attributes that belong to different functional parts of the system. Out of the box the platform provides the following groups:

Attribute Management

Configuring attributes is a simple task and usually involves creating an attribute definition in System > Attributes section. Basic details required are declaration of a unique attribute code and type of the value for this attribute. After an attribute is created its code cannot be changed.

Usually attributes are created for a specific purpose such as additional attributes already supported by the platform, new attributes for custom implementations and meta data. When and how the attribute is created and used will largely depend on the business requirements.

In most cases business users will only need to create PRODUCT attributes to configure product types. For example product type of "Notebook" may need attributes such as "RAM", "HDD specification" and "CPU speed", where as product of type "Dress" would need attributes such as "color", "size" and "collection".

The best way to think about attributes is as a description of properties of an object. For example when defining "color" attribute for PRODUCT we may specify it as a String property because it is just a colour name but that can be translated into various languages, so it has to be localisable. But we always search for specific colour so every value that we save e.g. "red", "white" and so on will be a specific match in terms of search. On the other had if we are talking about "RAM" we may specify this as a number (e.g. number of GB), which would allow us to search for notebooks that have RAM of more than 4GB but less than 8GB and so on. For advanced attributes we can even specify validation expression. For example when configuring "email" attribute for CUSTOMER we can set a regular expression rule to tell the system which emails are valid and thus prevent customers from entering bogus emails. There are many use cases and the platform provides a flexible mechanism to cover this.

Specifying attribute type will also enable some of the features in Admin app. Thus for specific value types a dedicated editor will be used. For example String would use a localisable component to capture the value, Integer will use a single input with validation for whole number values and Image will have an upload button and a preview for existing value.

Attribute code

Attribute code should only contain latin letters, numbers and underscore characters. It is advisable to set code as a meaningful name (e.g. CART_MAX_ITEM_SIZE rather than ATTR0001). This will make management of the system easier in the long run (e.g. when it comes to import).

Value type

The following product types are supported by the platform:

Type	Data type	Admin editor	Example	Default validation
String	java.lang.String	Localizable string	any random string
SecureString	java.lang.String	Localizable string + masking in table view	any random string
URI	java.lang.String	Text input	file://path/to/file
URL	java.lang.String	Text input	http://mydomain/path/to/file.html
Image	java.lang.String	Image upload + preview	image.png   Uploaded images will be converted using PNG or JPG encoder only	*.png, *.jpg, *.jpeg
File	java.lang.String	upload + preview	documentation.pdf
SystemFile	java.lang.String	upload + preview	documentation.pdf
CommaSeparatedList	java.lang.String	Text area	Value1,Value2,Value3
Phone	java.lang.String	Text input	+3(096)5555555 555-55-55	^[\+]?[\(\)0-9\- ]+$
Email	java.lang.String	Text input	bob.doe@domedomain.com	^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,4})$
HTML	java.lang.String	Text area	<div>piece of <b>html</b></div>
Float	java.lang.Float	Text input	10.2 -10.2 10	^(([\-][0-9]+)|([0-9]*))[\.]?[0-9]+$
Integer	java.lang.Integer	Text input	10 -10	^[\-]?[0-9]+$
Boolean	java.lang.Boolean	Checkbox	true false   either true or false	(true|false)
Date	java.time.LocalDate	Text input	2014-04-29   For example 1st February 2010 would be 2010-02-01.	^[0-9]{4}\-([0][1-9]|[1][0-2])\-([0][1-9]|[1-2][0-9]|[3][0-1])?$
DateTime	java.time.LocalDateTime	Text input	2014-04-29 14:42:55   For example 1st February 2010 1:45pm would be 2010-02-01 13:45:00. Time part is optional	^[0-9]{4}\-([0][1-9]|[1][0-2])\-([0][1-9]|[1-2][0-9]|[3][0-1]) ( ([0][0-9]|[1][0-9]|[2][0-3]):[0-5][0-9]:[0-5][0-9])?$
Timestamp	java.time.Instant	Text input	1462372975000   Unix timestamp	^[\-]?[0-9]+$
Locked	java.lang.String	read only

Validation

Validation regular expression and message allow to give hints to Admin app editors so that more advanced validation can be performed as opposed default ones for given type.

Customer facing attributes e.g. CUSTOMER attributes that participate in registration/profile forms or ADDRESS attributes that participate in address capture forms will use the validation expression on storefront and corresponding error message will be displayed to customers.

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