Customizing how products are categorized in the Strands integration

By default, Kentico uses page type IDs to categorize products in the Strands integration – both in the Strands catalog feed and the Strands recommendations web part. To fully customize the categorization in both places, you need to create a custom implementation of the IStrandsCatalogCategoryMapper interface. By customizing the categorization, you can have it better represent the structure of your site.

This page describes how to create a custom class in which you perform such a customization. The page also provides two sample customizations for you to build on.

Implementing custom Strands product categorization

1. Open your Kentico web project in Visual Studio (using the WebSite.sln or WebApp.sln file).

2. Create a new class, for example named CustomStrandsCatalogCategoryMapper.cs.

   • Either add the class into a custom code library project within the Kentico solution (recommended) or directly into the Kentico web project (into a custom folder under the CMSApp project for web application installations, into the App_Code folder for web site installations).

     When using a custom project (assembly), you need to perform the following steps to ensure that the system can detect your custom interface implementations:

     1. Edit your custom assembly’s AssemblyInfo.cs file (in the Properties folder).

     2. Add the AssemblyDiscoverable assembly attribute (requires a reference to CMS.Core.dll):

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         using CMS;
        
         [assembly:AssemblyDiscoverable]
        
        
         

     3. Save the file and Build the custom project.

3. Make the class implement the IStrandsCatalogCategoryMapper interface:

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    using System;
    using System.Globalization;
   
    using CMS;
    using CMS.Core;
    using CMS.StrandsRecommender;
    using CMS.DocumentEngine;
    using CMS.Ecommerce;
   
    // Registers the custom IStrandsCatalogCategoryMapper implementation
    [assembly: RegisterImplementation(typeof(IStrandsCatalogCategoryMapper), typeof(CustomStrandsCatalogCategoryMapper))]
   
    public class CustomStrandsCatalogCategoryMapper : IStrandsCatalogCategoryMapper
    {
        public string GetItemCategory(TreeNode catalogItem)
        {
            // Body of your Strands catalog categorization customization method
        }
    }
   
   
    

4. Add a custom implementation for the GetItemCategory method, as described in one of the following examples:

   1. Using an SKU department ID as the category field in the Strands catalog feed

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       /// <summary>
       /// Retrieves SKUDepartmentID which will be used for categorizing the page in the Strands integration.
       /// </summary>
       /// <param name="catalogItem">Document</param>
       /// <returns>Category field</returns>
       public string GetItemCategory(TreeNode catalogItem)
       {
           SKUInfo skuInfo = SKUInfoProvider.GetSKUInfo(catalogItem.NodeSKUID);
           if (skuInfo != null)
           {
               return skuInfo.SKUDepartmentID.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
           }
           throw new Exception("[CustomStrandsCategoryCatalogMapper.GetItemCategory]: SKUInfo was not found for specified TreeNode.");
       }
      
      
       

   2. Using the path to the page as the category field in the Strands catalog feed

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       /// <summary>
       /// Retrieves the path to the page, excluding the page's name. The path will be used for categorizing the page in the Strands integration.
       /// </summary>
       /// <param name="catalogItem">Document</param>
       /// <returns>Category field</returns>
       public string GetItemCategory(TreeNode catalogItem)
       {
           string docName = catalogItem.DocumentName;
           string docNamePath = catalogItem.DocumentNamePath;
      
           return docNamePath.Substring(0, docNamePath.Length - docName.Length);
       }
      
      
       

5. Save the class file and build your solution.

Now that you have customized the GetItemCategory method, view your Strands catalog feed. You should see the system categorizing products in the feed according to the new customization.

• You can view your Strands catalog feed at: ~/CMSModules/StrandsRecommender/CMSPages/StrandsCatalogFeed.ashx
• The same categorization is now used in the Strands recommendations web part in the Category recommendation type.