Retrieving Alternative Products

The Alternative Products feature allows customers to quickly find a substitute product in case if their preferred item runs out of stock or is no longer available for other reasons. The feature is particularly useful when a certain product becomes discontinued. In this case, customers usually seek for a more up-to-date generation of the same product, and suggesting possible alternatives is especially crucial.

The Product Alternatives API provides access to alternative products via REST API requests. In particular, you can:

• Find out whether a specific concrete product is discontinued;
• Retrieve a list of alternative products for a specific product.

In your development, the endpoints can help you to:

• Provide alternatives to a customer in the case when a desired product runs out of stock or is otherwise unavailable, for example, due to local restrictions;
• Provide replacements in case a certain product is discontinued;
• Make alternative products available to customers in their shopping list or suggestions area in order to make searching for and comparing similar products easier. This can significantly enhance the shopping experience in your shop.

Installation

For detailed information on the modules that provide the API functionality and related installation instructions, see Alternative Products.

Managing Products

Retrieving Alternative Products The Alternative Products feature allows customers to quickly find a substitute product in case if their preferred item runs out of stock or is no longer available for other reasons. The feature is particularly useful when a certain product becomes discontinued. In this case, customers usually seek for a more up-to-date generation of the same product, and suggesting possible alternatives is especially crucial.

For more details, see Alternative Products and Discontinued Products.

The Product Alternatives API provides access to alternative products via REST API requests. In particular, you can:

Find out whether a specific concrete product is discontinued; Retrieve a list of alternative products for a specific product. Only concrete products can be marked as discontinued and, therefore, alternatives can be specified for concrete products only.

In your development, the endpoints can help you to:

Provide alternatives to a customer in the case when a desired product runs out of stock or is otherwise unavailable, for example, due to local restrictions; Provide replacements in case a certain product is discontinued; Make alternative products available to customers in their shopping list or suggestions area in order to make searching for and comparing similar products easier. This can significantly enhance the shopping experience in your shop. It is the responsibility of the client to identify whether a product is unavailable and when to provide alternatives. The API only provides information on availability, discontinued status and possible alternatives.

Installation

For detailed information on the modules that provide the API functionality and related installation instructions, see Alternative Products.

Checking Whether Product is Discontinued

Before suggesting an alternative product, first, you need to identify whether a product is still available, for example, not discontinued. For this purpose, the response of the /concrete-products endpoint has been extended with the following attributes:

To find out whether a product is discontinued, send a GET request to the endpoint:

/concrete-products/{{sku}} Retrieves information on a concrete product by SKU.

Request sample: GET http://mysprykershop.com/concrete-products/145_29885470 where 145_29885470 is the SKU of the concrete product.

If the request was successful and a product with the specified SKU was found, the resource responds with a RestConcreteProductsResponse. Sample response (truncated) with the isDiscontinued and discontinuedNote fields populated:

{
    "data": {
        "type": "concrete-products",
        "id": "145_29885470",
        "attributes": {
            "isDiscontinued": true,
            "discontinuedNote": "Replaced by Acer Aspire S7",
            "sku": "145_29885470",
            "name": "DELL Chromebook 13",
            "description": "The industry’s finest Sleek. Smooth. Strong: The carbon fiber finish with magnesium alloy is light, durable, cool to the touch and designed to impress. The Google ecosystem at your service: Expect Speed - boots in seconds, Simplicity - easy to use and manage, Secure - with virus protection built-in, encrypted user data and automated updates. A wide range of magnificence: Bring business projects to full light with industry leading brightness and viewing angles on a 13.3\" FHD IPS display with optional scratch-resistant Corning® Gorilla® Glass NBT™ touch display. Business class performance - Browse faster using up to core i5 5th gen intel Core processors and experience the performance of Dell's most powerful chromebook. Professional looks and productivity: Thoughtfully designed to be sleek and useful with a carbon fiber lid, dark gray alloy chassis, backlit keyboard, glass track pad and 1080p display. Work on the go: Securely and easily access servers, mirror desktops and improve lifecycle management with Dell unique IP from KACE, SonicWALL (VPN) and Wyse.",
            "attributes": {...},
            "superAttributesDefinition": [...],
            "metaTitle": "DELL Chromebook 13",
            "metaKeywords": "DELL,Entertainment Electronics",
            "metaDescription": "The industry’s finest Sleek. Smooth. Strong: The carbon fiber finish with magnesium alloy is light, durable, cool to the touch and designed to impress. The",
            "attributeNames": {...}
        },
        "links": {...},
        "relationships": {...}
    },
    "included": [...]
}

Possible Errors

Retrieving Alternatives for Product

To retrieve alternatives for a product, send a GET request to the following endpoints:

• /concrete-products/{{sku}}/abstract-alternative-products - gets abstract products that substitute the item whose SKU is specified;
• /concrete-products/{{sku}}/concrete-alternative-products - gets concrete products that substitute the item whose SKU is specified.

Request sample: GET http://mysprykershop.com/concrete-products/145_29885470/abstract-alternative-products where 145_29885470 is the SKU of the product you are searching alternatives for.

Response

Depending on the endpoint used, the request will be either an AbstractProductsRestCollectionResponse or a ConcreteProductsRestCollectionResponse:

• AbstractProductsRestCollectionResponse - represents a collection, where each item is an abstract alternative to the product requested;
• ConcreteProductsRestCollectionResponse - represents a collection, where each item is a concrete alternative to the product requested.

Sample Responses:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "type": "abstract-products",
      "id": "055",
      "attributes": {...},
      "links": {
        "self": "http://mysprykershop.com/abstract-products/055"
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "abstract-products",
      "id": "056",
      "attributes": {...},
      "links": {
        "self": "http://mysprykershop.com/abstract-products/056"
      }
    }
  ],
  "links": {
    "self": "http://mysprykershop.com/concrete-products/145_29885470/abstract-alternative-products"
  }
}

{
    "data": [
        {
            "type": "concrete-products",
            "id": "142_30943081",
            "attributes": {...},
            "links": {
                "self": "http://mysprykershop.com/concrete-products/142_30943081"
            }
        },
        {
            "type": "concrete-products",
            "id": "140_22766487",
            "attributes": {...},
            "links": {
                "self": "http://mysprykershop.com/concrete-products/140_22766487"
            }
        }
    ],
    "links": {
        "self": "http://mysprykershop.com/concrete-products/138_30046855/concrete-alternative-products"
    }
}

Possible Errors