Sample: Extracting Commerce Composer pages

This sample demonstrates how to extract Commerce Composer pages and page content, such as SEO information, layouts, layout templates, and widgets. This sample uses the Data Extract utility to extract the Commerce Composer data for a specific store. We can then use the Data Load utility to load the extracted data into another WebSphere Commerce instance or store to quickly copy pages and page content between instances or stores.

In the Commerce Composer framework, a page is a specific URL on the storefront. Each page can include specific SEO information and be assigned one or more layouts for displaying widgets on the page. For more information about pages, see Pages and page creation.

Before beginning

Ensure that you complete the following tasks:

Note: If you plan to load the extracted data into another instance, the store to load data into must have the Commerce Composer tool enabled. The Aurora starter store is enabled to use the Commerce Composer tool.


About this sample

When you run this sample, the Data Extract utility is configured to extract the pages and page-related data for only the store that you specify. We can specify the store in the environment configuration file or directly in the command line when you run the utility.

The extracted page-related data includes any SEO information that is available for the extracted pages. This information includes SEO information that is available in multiple languages. The utility also extracts data for layout templates, layouts, and layout assignments for pages. The sample configuration files used to configure the Data Extract utility are in the following directory and subdirectories:


Sample configuration files

The following configuration files are used to configure the Data Extract utility to extract data into CSV output files.


Procedure

  1. Copy the sample configuration files and directories to a local directory.

  2. Edit your copy of the sample environment configuration file to set the configuration variables for the environment. The sample configuration file used in this sample includes values for a default WebSphere Commerce Developer environment that uses an Apache Derby database. If the environment settings are different, change the configured values in the environment configuration file to match the environment. For more information about updating an environment configuration file, see Configure the data load environment settings.

  3. (Developer) On a command line, go to the WCDE_installdir\bin directory.

  4. (Linux) Open a command line in the Utility server Docker container. Change the directory to utilities_root/bin directory.
    For information about entering and leaving containers, see Running utilities from the Utility server Docker container.

  5. Enter the following command to run the sample data extract order configuration for extracting the page data into CSV output files:

    • (Linux) ./dataextract.sh ../samples/DataExtract/CommerceComposer/wc-dataextract-page.xml

    • (Developer) dataextract ..\samples\DataExtract\CommerceComposer\wc-dataextract-page.xml

When the utility completes the extraction process, the utility generates the CSV output files within the configured output directory and subdirectories. These files include data for all pages and page-related content that exist for the configured store ID. By default, the files are generated in the following output directory and subdirectories:


Verifying results

  1. Go to the directory that you configured as the output directory. If we did not configure an output directory, go to the following directory:

  2. Verify that the following CSV output files are generated:

    • template/registerWidgetdef.csv

    • template/subscribeWidgetdef.csv

    • widget/subscribeWidgetdef.csv

    • template/template.csv

    • template/slotDefinition.csv

    • widget/layout.csv

    • page/page.csv

    • page/seopage.csv

    • page/seopagedesc.csv

    • page/layoutAssignment.csv

    • page/MultiLanguages/seopagedescWithMultiLanguages.csv

  3. Open the output CSV files to review the file contents.

  4. Verify that the file contents match the data in the database for the pages that belong to the specified store.


What to do next

We can load your extracted data into another WebSphere Commerce instance with the Data Load utility. For a sample that demonstrates how to load only page data, see Sample: Loading Commerce Composer pages. When you follow this sample, edit the load order configuration file to specify the CSV files that were generated by the Data Extract utility.

To load SEO page descriptive information in multiple languages, load the SEO information for the default store language first. Then, load the SEO information for multiple languages. By loading the information in the default language first, we can reduce the risk of errors during the load operation. We can specify the default language in the environment configuration file business context. For a sample that demonstrates how to load SEO information in multiple languages, see Sample: Loading Commerce Composer page SEO information in multiple languages. When you follow the sample, use the single file approach and edit the load order configuration file to specify the CSV file that was generated by the Data Extract utility. .


Related concepts
Overview of the Data Extract utility