Product Variant Search

This document describes search index behavior when a user is looking for for a configurable product or a product variant and finds the configurable product by the values from the assigned product variants. Here, you can also find what data is stored in the search index and how to customize it.

How It Works

When a user creates a configurable product, they associate it with several simple products called product variants. These variants should have different values for the configurable product attribute so that the application can identify the appropriate product variant by the value of the configurable product attribute.

When a user performs search in the application storefront, they should be able to find a configurable product by the values from the associated product variants. This feature works for the global search (all text), select and multi-select fields.

For instance, you could have three simple products with the TAG1, TAG2, and TAG3 SKUs, one configurable product with the SKU set to GENERAL-TAG. In addition, there could be two attributes, Color (of the select type) and Material (of the multi-select type). Both attributes are searchable and filterable. Color is used as a configurable product attribute. The illustration for this example is below:

Product SKU: TAG1
Color: Red
Material: Paper, Plastic

Product SKU: TAG2
Color: Green
Material: Paper

Product SKU: TAG3
Color: Blue
Material: Plastic

Product SKU: GENERAL-TAG
Color: empty
Material: empty

Here, we can have two scenarios:

• When product variants are invisible in the storefront (which is the default behavior)

• When product variants are visible (this behavior has to be set manually in the system configuration).

The first table below illustrates the behavior when product variants are invisible.

Filter	Value	Found products
All text	TAG1	GENERAL-TAG
All text	TAG2	GENERAL-TAG
All text	TAG3	GENERAL-TAG
All text	TAG4
All text	GENERAL-TAG	GENERAL-TAG
Color	Red	GENERAL-TAG
Color	Green	GENERAL-TAG
Color	Blue	GENERAL-TAG
Color	White
All text	Red	GENERAL-TAG
All text	Green	GENERAL-TAG
All text	Blue	GENERAL-TAG
All text	White
Material	Paper	GENERAL-TAG
Material	Plastic	GENERAL-TAG
Material	Metal
All text	Paper	GENERAL-TAG
All text	Plastic	GENERAL-TAG
All text	Metal

Here, a configurable product can be found by the values both from the configurable product and associated product variants.

The second table illustrates the application behavior when product variants are visible.

Filter	Value	Found products
All text	TAG1	GENERAL-TAG, TAG1
All text	TAG2	GENERAL-TAG, TAG2
All text	TAG3	GENERAL-TAG, TAG3
All text	TAG4
All text	GENERAL-TAG	GENERAL-TAG
Color	Red	GENERAL-TAG, TAG1
Color	Green	GENERAL-TAG, TAG2
Color	Blue	GENERAL-TAG, TAG3
Color	White
All text	Red	GENERAL-TAG, TAG1
All text	Green	GENERAL-TAG, TAG2
All text	Blue	GENERAL-TAG, TAG3
All text	White
Material	Paper	GENERAL-TAG, TAG1, TAG2
Material	Plastic	GENERAL-TAG, TAG1, TAG3
Material	Metal
All text	Paper	GENERAL-TAG, TAG1, TAG2
All text	Plastic	GENERAL-TAG, TAG1, TAG3
All text	Metal

As we can see, both the configurable product and product variants can be found using the values from the product variants.

Keep in mind that configurable products can be found not only by the configurable attribute filter (e.g., Color = Green), but also by the text representation of the appropriate option (e.g., All text = Green).

Search Index Data

Once you understand the expected behavior, you can check the search index data to find out how the application implements this behavior.

Using the same example with the tag products from the previous section, we can check what data we have in the search index:

TAG1

{
    "sku" : "TAG1",
    "is_variant" : "1",
    "all_text_1" : "TAG1 Red Paper Plastic",
    "color_red" : "1",
    "material_paper" : "1",
    "material_plastic" : "1"
}

TAG2

{
    "sku" : "TAG2",
    "is_variant" : "1",
    "all_text_1" : "TAG2 Green Paper",
    "color_green" : "1",
    "material_paper" : "1"
}

TAG3

{
    "sku" : "TAG3",
    "is_variant" : "1",
    "all_text_1" : "TAG3 Blue Plastic",
    "color_blue" : "1",
    "material_plastic" : "1"
}

GENERAL-TAG

{
    "sku" : "GENERAL-TAG",
    "is_variant" : "0",
    "all_text_1" : "GENERAL-TAG TAG1 TAG2 TAG3 Red Green Blue Paper Plastic",
    "color_red" : "1",
    "color_green" : "1",
    "color_blue" : "1",
    "material_paper" : "1",
    "material_plastic" : "1"
}

As illustrated in the example above, configurable product includes text, select, and multi-select attribute values from the product variants. So, when the application executes search query with the all_text_1 ~ TAG1 or color_red = 1 restrictions, both the configurable product and the product variant are found.

Extension Points

The logic that adds product variant data to the configurable product is encapsulated in the Oro\Bundle\ProductBundle\Search\ProductVariantProviderDecorator class. This class decorates the Oro\Bundle\ProductBundle\Search\WebsiteSearchProductIndexDataProvider standard data provider and adds the text, select, and multi-select attribute values of a product variant to the configurable product.

If you need to change this behavior or the logic of data collection, create another data provider decorator that implements the Oro\Bundle\ProductBundle\Search\ProductIndexDataProviderInterface interface which changes the search index data. Next, decorate the original provider in the DI container.

Here is an example of how you can implement this:

services:
    oro_product.provider.website_search_index_data.product_variants:
        class: Oro\Bundle\ProductBundle\Search\ProductVariantProviderDecorator
        decorates: 'oro_product.provider.website_search_index_data'
        decoration_inner_name: 'oro_product.provider.website_search_index_data.original'
        arguments:
            - '@oro_product.provider.website_search_index_data.original'