The ProductList-ATGCategoryChildren cartridge displays the child products for the currently selected category on category pages.

Note: This cartridge should only be used on category pages. If you place it on a browse page, it will not render any content. See Category Pages versus Browse Pages for more details on the differences between the two page types.

Template

The XML template for the ProductList-ATGCategoryChildren cartridge, located in <ATG10dir>/CommerceReferenceStore/Store/Storefront/deploy/cartridge_templates/MainContent-ProductList-ATGCategoryChildren.xml, sets the cartridge’s content type to MainContent and its ID to ProductList-ATGCategoryChildren. The XML template defines one editable property, recordsPerPage, that defines the number of child products to show for the current category.

Content Item and Handler

The atg.projects.store.assembler.cartridge.ProductListCategoryChildrenContentItem class represents the content item that the ProductList-ATGCategoryChildren cartridge returns to the renderer. The ProductListCategoryChildrenContentItem class has three properties:

Note that a ProductListCategoryChildrenContentItem object does not contain the actual child products. It is the JSP renderer’s responsibility to retrieve the correct child products from the catalog repository based on the categoryId returned in the content item.

The /atg/endeca/assembler/cartridge/handler/ProductListCategoryChildren component, which is of class atg.projects.store.assembler.cartridge.handler.ProductListCategoryChildrenHandler, is the cartridge handler responsible for creating and populating the ProductListCategoryChildrenContentItem object. The ProductListCategoryChildrenHandler class is an extension of the com.endeca.infront.cartridge.NavigationCartridgeHandler class with an overridden process() method. The process() method retrieves the current navigation state from the /atg/endeca/assembler/cartridge/manager/NavigationState component and creates a new ProductListCategoryChildrenContentItem object. A call to the ProductListcategoryChildrenHandler.loadCategoryDetails() method populates the ProductListCategoryChildrenContentItem object with data from the catalog repository and returns it to the JSP renderer.

To do its tasks, the ProductListCategoryChildren component has two configurable properties:

The ProductListCategoryChildren component also inherits a number of properties from the /atg/endeca/assembler/cartridge/handler/NavigationCartridgeHandler component, through a $basedOn property configuration. Specifically, ProductListCategoryChildren inherits a reference to the /atg/endeca/assembler/cartridge/manager/NavigationState component that provides information on the shopper’s current navigation state.

JSP Renderer

The store.war/cartridges/ProductListCategoryChildren/ProductListCategoryChildren.jsp page renders the content in the ProductListCategoryChildrenContentItem object. This renderer retrieves the categoryId value from the ProductListCategoryChildrenContentItem object and uses this value as a parameter to the /atg/commerce/catalog/CategoryLookup servlet bean to retrieve the category and its child products from the Catalog repository. The child products are then passed to the /atg/store/sort/RangeSortDroplet servlet bean, along with the recordsPerPage value returned in the content item, to sort and render the child product list.