Webshop: Product search on f.ex. on futures

[Robert Gan]

Hey guys,

i just started to check out the ootb functionality concerning Webstore frontenend.

Im have seeen a lot of sites (mostly electronic seller) who have for each catagorie a spezific formular to narrow the product search.

in Ofbiz I found the "advanced search" function, where I can add futures to the category and afterwards I can choose the future I like to get a better search result. This is a good start.

But what I dont like is that there is no checking if there is a product with these futures in that categorie...so I can select futures on product search and dont get any result.

do someone now how to handle it? IT would be also great if I choose one future to narrow my results, that all other formulars change to only the available futures after that.

Example store: http://www.projectorshop24.co.uk/projector/projector.html
You see there the selection of manufacturer and so on.

another thing is, that when I use the sample future "Model Year Features" every year is listed in the search menu. But I maybe want to search like: from 1990, from 2000, from 1980 and so on to find similar products.

any ideas?

looking forward to it :)

Kindly

Robert

btw. What is the difference between Futures and Attributes (I now futures can change for each product, but for what do I use attributes?)

[Nick Rosser]

Robert,

Our BigFish eCommerce solution that leverages OFBiz uses an
implementation from Lucene/SOLR to do exactly what you're looking for.

Check out http://bigfish.salmonllc.com -- we have a "Demo" Electronic
Store that may be of interest to you.

Best Regards,

Nick Rosser
[hidden email]
O: 516.742.7888 x221
C: 516.901.1720


On 3/29/2012 11:26 AM, Robert2012 wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> i just started to check out the ootb functionality concerning Webstore
> frontenend.
>
> Im have seeen a lot of sites (mostly electronic seller) who have for each
> catagorie a spezific formular to narrow the product search.
>
> in Ofbiz I found the "advanced search" function, where I can add futures to
> the category and afterwards I can choose the future I like to get a better
> search result. This is a good start.
>
> But what I dont like is that there is no checking if there is a product with
> these futures in that categorie...so I can select futures on product search
> and dont get any result.
>
> do someone now how to handle it? IT would be also great if I choose one
> future to narrow my results, that all other formulars change to only the
> available futures after that.
>
> Example store: http://www.projectorshop24.co.uk/projector/projector.html
> You see there the selection of manufacturer and so on.
>
> another thing is, that when I use the sample future "Model Year Features"
> every year is listed in the search menu. But I maybe want to search like:
> from 1990, from 2000, from 1980 and so on to find similar products.
>
> any ideas?
>
> looking forward to it :)
>
> Kindly
>
> Robert
>
> btw. What is the difference between Futures and Attributes (I now futures
> can change for each product, but for what do I use attributes?)
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/Webshop-Product-search-on-f-ex-on-futures-tp4515791p4515791.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Mike Z]

There is this patch, which I haven't tried:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-3925

I'd be interested if it works, and what it looks like.

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Robert2012 <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> i just started to check out the ootb functionality concerning Webstore
> frontenend.
>
> Im have seeen a lot of sites (mostly electronic seller) who have for each
> catagorie a spezific formular to narrow the product search.
>
> in Ofbiz I found the "advanced search" function, where I can add futures to
> the category and afterwards I can choose the future I like to get a better
> search result. This is a good start.
>
> But what I dont like is that there is no checking if there is a product
> with
> these futures in that categorie...so I can select futures on product search
> and dont get any result.
>
> do someone now how to handle it? IT would be also great if I choose one
> future to narrow my results, that all other formulars change to only the
> available futures after that.
>
> Example store: http://www.projectorshop24.co.uk/projector/projector.html
> You see there the selection of manufacturer and so on.
>
> another thing is, that when I use the sample future "Model Year Features"
> every year is listed in the search menu. But I maybe want to search like:
> from 1990, from 2000, from 1980 and so on to find similar products.
>
> any ideas?
>
> looking forward to it :)
>
> Kindly
>
> Robert
>
> btw. What is the difference between Futures and Attributes (I now futures
> can change for each product, but for what do I use attributes?)
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/Webshop-Product-search-on-f-ex-on-futures-tp4515791p4515791.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

[Robert Gan]

Hey, thanks for your fast replies!

@Nick: The Solr solution is interesting, but you implemented it as a manual solution. I think its better to get automated updates in sold db after adding / removing products, instead of scanning the whole db again.

@mick: I ll check it out. I want to ahve ofbiz ready for updates in future, so I think this solution is going too deep into the core. But maybe I can figure out a solution out of that example. I will post after did it, but as I said - just starting, so it would take some time :)

So Im right with my speculation, that it is not available ootb - am I?

Or do other user have easier solutions more aspected to the "Best Practice"-theorie of apache?

Wish you a nice day!

[Nick Rosser]

The SOLR re-indexing takes a couple of minutes if you have less than
approx 1000 products. We have other mechanisms to provide "during the
day" updates but for the most part we expect product add/removes to take
place once per day so indexing would be done overnight. It would be
interesting to see if SOLR could accept a "new product" snippet into
it's index.

You're correct, SOLR is part of BigFish ootb, but not currently
available in OFBiz ootb.

We consider SOLR to be a best-of-breed component for this type of
filtering -- IBM recently incorporated the software into their Websphere
eCommerce product.

Best Regards,

Nick Rosser
[hidden email]
O: 516.742.7888 x221
C: 516.901.1720


On 3/29/2012 12:49 PM, Robert2012 wrote:

> Hey, thanks for your fast replies!
>
> @Nick: The Solr solution is interesting, but you implemented it as a manual
> solution. I think its better to get automated updates in sold db after
> adding / removing products, instead of scanning the whole db again.
>
> @mick: I ll check it out. I want to ahve ofbiz ready for updates in future,
> so I think this solution is going too deep into the core. But maybe I can
> figure out a solution out of that example. I will post after did it, but as
> I said - just starting, so it would take some time :)
>
> So Im right with my speculation, that it is not available ootb - am I?
>
> Or do other user have easier solutions more aspected to the "Best
> Practice"-theorie of apache?
>
> Wish you a nice day!
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/Webshop-Product-search-on-f-ex-on-futures-tp4515791p4516065.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

[Robert Gan]

I just looked a little bit around concerning SOLR, nice project! Implementation seems not that difficult cause of running in the Java container and easy API to avoid hundreds of XML scans. I think I will give it a try :)

If someone allready got the implementation and setup for ofbiz (especially setup for ofbiz product database) please give us some tips :)

Kindly

Robert