Name: Understanding Value Resolvers in SAP Commerce Cloud
Uploaded: 2024-8-15
Duration: 397 s
Description: In this video, you will discover the role of value resolvers in SAP Commerce Cloud and learn how to develop a custom value resolver.

Share feedback

<p>We are aware of intermittent issues in accessing the learning content</p>

We are aware of intermittent issues in accessing the learning content

Personalize your learning.

Why create an SAP account?

Enhance your learning experience

SAP Learning

Choose your subscription

Manage your subscription

Live Sessions

Hands-on Practice

Certification

My Learning

Ready to start learning?

This browser is not supported

Please try again later

Sorry, we encountered an error

Try again or reset results to continue browsing

We didn’t find what you’re looking for

To continue, please log in

Your session has timed out

Validate your skills and learning by completing the certification exam and gain a highly recognised accreditation.

Book your certification exam

Complete the assessment to validate your SAP PartnerEdge competency qualifications.

Ready to take your assessment?

Learn about the key features and essentials in the latest release to help you prepare for the Stay Certified assessment.

Prepare for assessment

Learn new skills you need at your own pace with our bite-sized lessons.

Prepare for certification

In your My Learning account you can view your certification and learn how to take your Stay Certified assessment.

Ready to take your Stay Certified assessment?

Explore {title} at SAP Learning. Find out more!

Assessment

Course Completion

Knowledge Badge

Overview

Support Resource

Certification Exam

Theoretical Exam

Schedule

External Course

Practical Exercise

Practical Test

External Hands-On

External Resource

Learning Journey

Learning Journey Assessment

Lesson

Live Session

Practice System

Quiz

Scenario Based Assessment

Course Assessment

Course

Stay Certified

Subscription

System Based Assessment

Test Out

Unit

Video

Video Playlist

Week

Want to remove this from your Learning List?

Your exclusive access to the SAP Learning Hub, event edition is ready. <link>Start learning now.</link>

Access activated

You can now register for free Live Sessions.

<div><div><div><div><div><div><div>In this video, you will discover the role of value resolvers in SAP Commerce Cloud and learn how to develop a custom value resolver.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div>

Understanding Value Resolvers in SAP Commerce Cloud

Hello, let’s talk about Value Resolvers in the Search and Navigation module. Here is an overview of the Search mechanism in SAP Commerce Cloud: On the left-hand side, FlexibleSearch requests are sent to the database and Model objects are returned. The cache is involved in case the requested data is already present in the cache and can be returned directly. On the right-hand side, usually for search or category pages, search data is returned from Solr as text results. A Solr server utilizes a Lucene index which contains the indexed data for searching. Value resolvers play an important role here, when populating Solr’s Lucene indexes with data originating from the database. The Indexing process consists of 3 phases: extract, transform, and load. The “extract” phase uses Flexible Search to obtain model data from database. Several indexing modes are available: such as full, update, partial, delete, etc. The “transform” phase generates SolrInputDocuments containing attributes and values originating from the extracted model data. Finally, the “load” phase sends the transformed document data to the Solr server to populate the Lucene Index. Only configured, indexed properties of product data, as opposed to all attributes, are extracted and written to the Solr index. In Backoffice, we can display and manage the indexed properties with configuration options, as seen here. For each property, there is a given Solr type, facet option, multi-value option, and so on. Some Product type attributes are configured in special ways as needed, such as price (numerical) value, price formatted string, facet-able price ranges, etc. This is where Value Resolvers come into play. The configuration for each attribute can be done through ImpEx as well. We again see the same options as we saw in Backoffice, such as Solr type, multi-value, facet, etc. The configuration attribute, fieldValueProvider specifies which Value Resolver to use for each property. This attribute takes the id or alias of a Spring bean that generates the value that should be sent to Solr’s Lucene index for a given property. In this example, the springELValueProvider bean is used. What is it?  The out-of-the-box springELValueProvider bean is used for some existing product attributes, by default, as a typical value provider implementation. As can be guessed from its name, it derives a value based on a SpringEL (Expression Language) expression. It is useful for the common case of Value Resolvers where a simple mapping from database value to index value is possible. The field valueProviderParameter contains the evaluation expression to be used when invoking the springELValueProvider. Here is an example of an evaluation expression, checking if the type of Product is not null, the attribute label related to the passed context language is used, otherwise null is returned. If no valueProviderParameter is provided, the name of the indexed property is taken. Since value resolvers play the most important role during the transform phase, let’s have a look at this process in more detail. First of all, all related item models are passed to the transform process. For each item Model, an empty Solr input document object is created, which you can think of as an index record or entry. It will be defined with the values obtained from all the specified value resolvers. Each value resolver is called to provide its value based on its corresponding indexed property. Here we see that the essential method “addFieldValue()” is invoked to determine the index value and add it to the input document object. Iteration continues until the indexed properties, all the value resolvers, and finally all the item models are processed. Finally, each populated Solr input document, now filled with index-ready values, is sent to the Solr server for indexing. There are some key points to be noted before we talk about the implementation of a value resolver. If no value resolver is defined, the default ModelAttributesValueResolver is used. The name of the indexed property is taken as the attribute input for the value resolver. For more complex treatments, a custom ValueResolver should be provided, which we will learn about later. A ValueResolver can group indexed properties and avoid code duplications. Therefore, the recommended way for creating a custom ValueResolver is to extend the AbstractValueResolver class and use a QualifierProvider. There is also an interface called FieldValueProvider, but it is deprecated, thus should no longer be used.  Here is the class AbstractValueResolver. The most important method to implement is the addFieldValues() method, which is mandatory. This method fills the Input Document object with values from the given item model. The methods loadData() and loadQualifierData() are optional. They are used to load related data into the current context based on the model and qualifier, respectively. You can check the ProductClassificationAttributesValueResolver class for an implementation example for the loadData() method, or the ProductPricesValueResolver for the loadQualifierData() method implementation.  Here we can see an example implementation of a custom ValueResolver. First, declare a class by extending AbstractValueResolver. Implement the method addFieldValues() with the appropriate determination of the value as it should be indexed. Second, register the custom value resolver as a Spring Bean. Now, the Spring bean id can be used as the fieldValueProvider of any relevant indexed property in Backoffice or ImpEx as shown before. For more information, look at the following documentation pertaining to the Search and Navigation module. This concludes our brief introduction to Value Resolvers. Thank you for watching!