Global product attributes

[violet inlet]

Hellos, how do you solve defining system level product options and category dependent ones?

Admin UI allows to define ad hoc product attributes on product creation, to compose the product variants based on their values. I’m sure many have attributes with a predefined set of values that you would like every product variant to set.

Example: size L, M, S for clothing categories, size 38, 39, 40 for footwear categories and new, like new, used not dependant on a category for every product.

How can one resolve this?

[noble spindle]

@solid loom is this something you did for one of our clients?

[solid loom]

I added the ability to have custom attributes added to a product.

These fields are added to the product based on the category that the product is put in.

I'm not sure if that's exactly what you are looking for though.

[violet inlet]

Thanks for the response guys!

I have follow up questions:

Does this differ form medusa-custom-attributes plugin? By different i mean if this are “marker” to allow filtering from a storefront for example, or do they impact the product_option table, thus defining what can be put when creating a variant?

Does it support defining different option values, for the same attribute based on category?

So to represent the concept of Size, to have a series of values for category A and a series of values for category B

[noble spindle]

@violet inlet I don't believe they are used as a variant restriction currently. I don't believe these are being used for customer input currently, although they could be. But it's not extended to the variant options.

[violet inlet]

mmm I see, so it sounds like it's similar to medusa-custom-attributes from Rigby, where these act as "markers" to make it easier to filter / organize in storefront. Do you have it as a plugin?

It is really weird for me that i would have expected seeing a solution for this, since it is a problem we are all having (if i am not missing something). I'll need to keep looking, but it is pretty critical for me at the stage of my development to have a solutio[n for this 😦

[noble spindle]

Correct, custom attributes is mostly for filtering. I’m not sure if we built it as a plugin or not.

Yeah, I think custom forms is something that people are wanting. I’m not sure if that’s been built yet or not. But I haven’t seen a need for these option templates by category.

Is this because you plan on having a lot of the same kind of inventory and don’t want to have to bulk apply? Maybe the community is just waiting for you to invent the solution! 😅😢

[violet inlet]

Mainly it's because my Vendors will be selling clothes. There are some Options that are shared by all clothing products, such as Size or Condition. Current Medusa implementation regarding Product Option assumes as if you would not have common Options among products, which will never be the case, refardless of what you sell.

I would have expected the Product Option table not to have a 'product_id', but rather, it would be a global Option, that then products can reference, when defining Variants, by choosing from one of the available Option Values. Without this, i would end up with a lot of duplication, for products that share the same Option and list of possible OptionValues.

@cosmic sigil would appreciate you input regarding this matter.

[cosmic sigil]

Hey Nicolas,
The problem is the duplication in the database? Or is it really more the option creation process that's time-consuming?

Because if it's the latter case, I imagine product option templates, which would be a good representation of your “global options” concept. You could even make it so that when a variant is created, an event populates the options by default with these product option templates (plus values of course)