Endeca need to return all its values under one dimension

Question

I need to return all values under one dimension (e.g. Product.category) in Endeca and return all its values as JSON object to content assembler. Can someone provide an optimal way to achieve this feature?

Answer 1

This is a tricky one, particularly because I'm assuming the product.category is a hierarchical dimension.

With a regular navigation query (such as a search results page), there's no way to bring back every level of a hierarchical dimension at once. However, using a Dimension search (and if you have --compoundDimSearch turned OFF), you can make a query like this: D=*&Dn=0&Di=10001 (where 10001 might be the dimension ID for product.category).

That will bring back every value in the dimension.

What you could do is maybe make / extend the DimensionSearchResultsHandler to help you out. In the preprocess() method, you would construct a query like the one above.

Then in the process method, you'd do something like:

        ENEQueryResults results = executeMdexRequest(mMdexRequest);
        NavigationState navigationState = getNavigationState();
        navigationState.inform(results);

        DimensionSearchResults dimensionSearchResults = new    DimensionSearchResults(cartridgeConfig);
        DimensionSearchResultsBuilder.build(
                getActionPathProvider(),
                dimensionSearchResults,
                navigationState,
                results.getDimensionSearch(),
                cartridgeConfig.getDimensionList(),
                cartridgeConfig.getMaxResults(),
                cartridgeConfig.isShowCountsEnabled());

        return dimensionSearchResults;

That will help you build out the Assembler objects for the results. Then if you made an Assembler query that returns JSON, these results would be returned as well.

One big caveat: The results above aren't nicely formatted. What I mean is that this will bring back every leaf value and its ancestors. If you wanted to create a nice hierarchical display, you'd have to do a bunch of formatting yourself.