Catalog Product Index `category.is_virtual` flag

[vpashovski]

Hello, I want Virtual Categories in my catalog_product index.
I can see there is a flag in it, but it is not populated for Virtual Categories:

I found that this flag is set to true only if products are ordered manually from the backend.

Is there any way to index those categories and add them there? I tried one solution, but products for virtual categories are getting with elasticsearch query and when there is no index created yet, there is a problem.
Can't find how to get products for virtual categories without querying elastic.

Any suggestions here how I can populate this during catalogsearch_fulltext reindex?

[rbayet]

Hello @vpashovski,

Yes, by design, the products "associated" with a virtual category can only be determined when the category is viewed, aka when the category's rules are converted into an Elasticsearch query.
There is no way to get the products of a virtual category without executing that query.

There is a reverse way to know which virtual categories a product is supposed to be visible in through the percolation mechanism.
You could have a special index containing all the virtual categories as documents, each document containing the virtual category's query.
And then, when you re-index a product, have a data source that execute a percolate query for that product data against that index, this will tell you which virtual category queries the product matches.
This kind of percolation is not available in Elasticsuite but the same principle is applied in the (not actively maintained) module smile/module-elasticsuite-targetrule.

Out of curiosity, why do you need that extra info at the product level ?
Is it to include your virtual categories in a sitemap or a product export or something like that ?

Regards,

[vpashovski]

Hi @rbayet ,
Thanks for the answer, will check smile/module-elasticsuite-targetrule and how it works to see if can help.

On your question, I need this to show Category name in Search Autocomplete based on Products. This means if product name is "Product 1" and it belongs to "Category 1" when user search for "Product 1" as a suggestion to show also "Category 1" in Categories section.
This works with normal categories because I have all categories from the index but not working for virtual categories because there is no data about them.
Also as you mention I will need those categories in product export as well.

Regards,

[rbayet]

Hello @vpashovski,

Hummm, so you're actually showing categories in the autocomplete based on a aggregation instead of the native block that performs a search (here in your exemple for "Product 1") in the categories index ?

If so, and again, if you don't have too many virtual categories (be careful NOT to design a significant part of your categories tree based on virtual categories, you'll run into performance problems) you could also rely on a aggregation that also takes into account virtual categories' query (a bit like the native Elasticsuite category layer navigation filter/aggregation does).
But yeah, not the best of performances in an autocomplete.

Regards,

[vpashovski]

Hello @rbayet ,
Yes, I'm showing categories based on a aggregation of products and most performance way is to get those from elastic.
Maybe I have to make category position to be saved in smile_virtualcategory_catalog_category_product_position even not manually position. In this way categories will be added in catalogsearch_fulltext index. Will see when have time for this :)

Regards,