Items, attributes & categories

The central element in Fredhopper is an item or a product. Items are browsed, searched and found, and are displayed on pages. Items have attributes defining aspects of the items, like a categorisation, color, size, brand etc.

• items
  • unique entities which are searched and browsed on, and which are found and displayed in the site. Items can be real physical products but also virtual entities like downloads or files. Each item has a unique identifier in Fredhopper.
• attributes
  • aspects of items. In Fredhopper, attributes are always linked to items (not to pages or categories).

Categories are a special type of attribute as it contains the classification of the items. An item should at least have one categories attribute, and this attribute is always named categories. Categories can have child categories which can in turn have child categories. The number of children (levels) is not limited and does not have to be the same across all categories. Items can exist in one or more categories. The top level category value is called universe. Fredhopper supports only one hierarchical attribute per universe. Fredhopper can handle products (items) that are in non-leaf categories. However, always keep in mind to have at least one category for every product that you want to load into Fredhopper. For a product to appear in Fredhopper it should at least have the universe defined in the categories attribute.