New filtering options added to the Product Search Ajax API improve the capabilities of client-side search.

New parameters accepted within the Product Search Ajax API allow theme developers to improve user-centric front-end functionality, or help implement features dropped from our server-side EVML templates due to our recent whole page caching update.

Filtering by Product IDs

Finding products explicitly by their IDs using the new id:in parameter is useful in a number of scenarios. For example, efficiently implementing "Recently viewed" functionality. 

Let's assume we want to obtain basic product data for Products with IDs 123 and 456. We can GET JSON representing these products by supplying their IDs as a comma separated list to the id:in parameter. For example, using jQuery your query may look something like this:

    jQuery.getJSON('/product/search.json?id:in=123,456', function(returnValue) {
        console.log(returnValue);
    } );

Finding products within one or more categories

You can now filter product results within a single category and all of its sub-categories using the new category parameter. Alternatively, if you need to target one or more categories explicitly (excluding their descendants), you can supply a comma separated list of category IDs to the category:in parameter.

In the example below we intend to find products associated with the current Category only, with an ID of 754.

    jQuery.getJSON('/product/search.json?category:in=754', function(returnValue) {
        console.log(returnValue);
    } );

Typically, you would use category or category:in independently and not in conjunction.

Price filtering

You can now filter products based on price. Although this requires both price[min] and price[max] parameters to be supplied, you can supply an empty value to min/max for open ended filtering. For example, you may wish to find all products under a certain value. Let's say you wanted to find products under £100 (assuming this is the currency of the site's current locale).

    jQuery.getJSON('/product/search.json?price[max]=100&price[min]=', function(returnValue) {
        console.log(returnValue);
    } );

Including or excluding featured products

You can now request or exlcude featured products from search results using the featured parameter. Supplying a value of true will limit results to only featured products, whilst supplying a false value will exclude them.

Closing thoughts

The new parameters outlined above may be used independently or in combination - allowing you to build targeted functionality. For example, you may wish to obtain featured products within a specific category. 

Find full reference documentation on the Product Search Ajax API page.

We hope to continue to improve functionality across our Ajax APIs to address the growing need for implementing more sophisticated client-side features.