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Product and Node Associations in Breadcrumb Metadata

A catalog is a list of products available for sale in your store. A catalog also contains information about how to organize those products for navigation menus and search facets in a shopper experience.

The hierarchies determine which products appear in the catalog, that is, only the products that are associated with the selected hierarchies are included in the catalog.

Understanding Breadcrumb Metadata​

breadcrumb metadata helps you understand the association of products with nodes; it explains how products are associated with parent nodes and the relationship among the array of nodes. This is useful if you want to improve how your shoppers search within your store.

The breadcrumb information that you get in an endpoint response depends on whether the endpoint is retrieving product or node details.

Product breadcrumb metadata​

Breadcrumb MetadataDescription
bread_crumbsThe tree of parent nodes associated with a product. The bread_crumbs metadata lists up to 10 levels of parent nodes that the product is associated with, depending on the number of levels of parent nodes you have.
bread_crumb_nodesThe relationship among the array of nodes associated with the product.

Understanding bread_crumbs metadata for products​

An example of bread_crumbs metadata is shown below.

{
    “data”: {
            “type”: “product”,
            “attributes”: {
            /*** other product attributes ommitted ***/
           "bread_crumbs": {
            "04e748f1-83db-4013-85c8-9edfb0e1b5fa": [
               "e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52",
               "94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de"
           ],
            "a96a898b-444c-40b6-9c27-5fc74d08e685": [
               "e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52"
          ]
       }
     }
   }
}

The following diagram illustrates how the parent nodes are listed in the bread_crumbs example above.

Breadcrumbs

  1. The product is in Node 2. The ID for Node 2 is shown first in the first set of breadcrumbs.
  2. Node 2 is part of Hierarchy 1. The ID for Hierarchy 1 is shown second.
  3. Node 1 is the parent node of Node 2. The ID for Node 1 is shown last.
  4. The product is also in Node 3. The ID for Node 3 is shown first in the second set of breadcrumbs.
  5. Node 3 is in the root of Hierarchy 1. The ID for Hierarchy 1 is shown last.

In the bread_crumb_nodes metadata, you can see a list of parent nodes a product is associated with.

If you subsequently add a product to a new node, then the bread_crumb_nodes metadata appends the new node to the top of the list. Using the example above, if we add the product to Node 1:

  1. The bread_crumb_nodes metadata is generated to show the new node appended to the top of the list.
  2. The bread_crumbs metadata is updated with the new node.
{
    “data”: {
            “type”: “product”,
            “attributes”: {
            /*** other product attributes ommitted ***/
            "bread_crumb_nodes": [
                "94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de",
                "04e748f1-83db-4013-85c8-9edfb0e1b5fa",
                "a96a898b-444c-40b6-9c27-5fc74d08e685"
             ],
             "bread_crumbs": {
                "04e748f1-83db-4013-85c8-9edfb0e1b5fa": [
                   "e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52",
                   "94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de"
               ],
               "94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de": [
                   "e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52"
               ],
               "a96a898b-444c-40b6-9c27-5fc74d08e685": [
                   "e5a64eae-56c2-48cd-b8b1-f5d3be734d52"
            ]
         }
      }
   }
}

Node breadcrumb metadata​

Breadcrumb MetadataDescription
bread_crumbThe relationship among the array of nodes – demonstrating the linking of the children nodes with the parent nodes. The bread_crumb metadata lists up to 10 levels of parent nodes that the node is associated with, depending on the number of levels of nodes you have.

Understanding bread_crumb metadata for nodes​

An example of bread_crumb metadata is shown below.

{
    “data”: {
            “type”: “node”,
            “attributes”: {
            /*** other product attributes ommitted ***/
            {
            "bread_crumb": [
                "04e748f1-83db-4013-85c8-9edfb0e1b5fa",
                "94b882fa-85de-470e-acb3-5b11358e02de",
                "a96a898b-444c-40b6-9c27-5fc74d08e685"
            ]
         }
      }
   }
}

The following diagram illustrates how the nodes are listed in the bread_crumb example above.

Breadcrumb

The bread_crumb metadata is an array of nodes that the node is associated with. Up to 10 levels of nodes are displayed, depending on the number of levels of nodes you have.

Understanding Breadcrumb Metadata for Child Products​

When a catalog is published, the breadcrumb information for a child product includes the metadata mentioned for the parent product, in addition to the information specific to the child product. For example, Product A is the parent product, associated with Node 1 and Node 2. The metadata for child Product B includes Node 1 and Node 2, in addition to its own metadata information.