Tutorial: Creating views for multiple catalogs in a store
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In this tutorial you learn how to create multiple catalogs for a store. Then you learn how to create views for those catalogs. Finally we will create links from the store home page to each of the views you create. There can be many reasons to have multiple catalogs. For example, you might have a requirement for one holiday sales catalog and one spring sales catalog. Instead of creating two different stores with two separate master catalogs, you can create two sales catalogs from one master catalog, and then modify the store to display a particular sales catalog when the customer uses the URL you set up for that purpose. You can also provide a link back to the master catalog so the customer can see all the items in the catalog.
Learning objectives
After completing this tutorial you should be able to create multiple catalogs, create references to views for those catalogs, and link a store header to the view references you create.
Time required
Expect this tutorial to take 2 hours to complete.
Audience
This tutorial is intended for store developers using the IBM WebSphere Commerce product.
Prerequisites
To complete this tutorial you should be familiar with the following terms and concepts:
Additional concepts:
- Catalogs can be referenced using unique identifiers instead of database keys
- Sales catalog categories can be resequenced
- Sales catalog categories can link to multiple category parents.
In this case, category information that is changed in the master catalog is automatically updated in all sales catalog multiple references.
- Sales catalog products can be resequenced
- Sales catalog products can be assigned to multiple category parents.
In this case, product information that is changed in the master catalog is automatically updated in all sales catalog multiple references.
- A subset of catalog data can be duplicated. This could minimize the amount of maintenance required to create new data.
Lessons in this tutorial
- Create sales catalogs
In this part of the tutorial we will create three different sales catalogs. The first one will act as the main sales catalog, the second one will be a holiday sales catalog, and the third one will be a spring fever sales catalog. When you create the catalogs make sure to enter the codes exactly as shown since those codes will be used in later steps. As well, make sure that these codes are unique and contain no spaces. After the unique identifier is in place, WebSphere Commerce provides the mechanism for the URL to reference the sales catalog by its identifier. Once you setup the store to point to a sales catalog this way, then all remaining pages will display that sales catalog until a new sales catalog is specified by another URL reference. This allows a shopper to be able to view multiple catalogs in a single store. - Create URL references
In this step of the tutorial we will add URL references to the store in order to load new views for the catalog you created in the previous step. - Add hypertext links
In this step of the tutorial we will create hypertext links in the CachedHeaderDisplay.jsp file that display on the store header. These hypertext links will work with the URL references you created in the previous step to show the new catalog views.