Video Dev News // March 2020
Dev News // March 2020
Every few months our CTO Georg Sorst takes some time out of his busy schedule to show you some of the new features and technologies that our Development teams are currently working on or have released. Enjoy!
New JSON API
We recently launched our new JSON API, one of the most popular feature requests to improve integration of Findologic.
The main improvement over the existing XML API:
The XML API only includes the product IDs of the search results. This means that in order to display the search results on the website it is necessary to fetch additional data such as name, image and price from the database or ERP.
Now, with the new JSON API, all product data required to display search results is already included in the response. That way, the search results can be displayed right away without having to fetch additional data first. This simplifies the integration of Findologic and also improves the runtime performance so that your visitors enjoy an even faster search experience.
Even product attributes such as brand, available sizes and material can be included in the response. With this data you can for example show the different product variants to your visitors right on the search result page.
As JSON is the default protocol for Client-Side Frameworks such as Angular, React or Vue.js, our new JSON API is a great fit if your online store is a Single-Page Application (SPA). But of course, the JSON API can be used for traditional server-side integrations as well.
To get started visit our interactive JSON API documentation.
Status Quo Shopware 6 Plugin
Our Shopware 6 plugin already fully supports search and navigation results. Next up will be custom filters and navigation once Shopware makes them available for plugins..
Beta tests are by now up and running and initial results look great. If you are currently migrating to Shopware 6 or plan to in the near future, let us know!
Multiselect filters with result counts
Another very popular feature request is result counts for Multiselect filters.
Previously, result counts were not available for Multiselect filters so your visitors had no way of telling how many search results they would get if they select a filter option.
Now, result counts are also supported for Multiselect filters, just like they have always been for every other filter type.
In order to further improve the user experience we implemented a special handling if products have multiple values for the same filter, eg. product variants with different colors or sizes. In this case the displayed result count is the number of additional results if the product is selected. That way, your visitor can see right away if the filter would increase their selection.
You can enable the result count in the Customer-Login.
Georg Sorst is CTO at FINDOLOGIC GmbH and was the first permanent employee of the company. He helped build both the team and the product from scratch. He gained his IT industry expertise and experience over many years with companies such as IBM as well as various start-ups. As a frequent guest and lecturer at conferences and events he ensures he remains technically up-to-date. Georg is also a member of the Gesellschaft für Informatik. What fascinates him about FINDOLOGIC is the constant challenges posed by the e-commerce market, in particular search technologies with their rapid developments and trends.