The Faceted Search feature enables Oracle ATG Web Commerce sites to provide a navigational structure that is not strictly based on the catalog hierarchy. Facets are like virtual categories that are populated by the results of search queries. Facets are implemented as search refinements, which are used to narrow down search results by searching within those results for only the items that fulfill a certain constraint. For example, a search might return men’s shirts, and then the customer might select a facet value that narrows the results to men’s shirts that are made of cotton.

This chapter describes how to write pages that implement Faceted Search on a Commerce site. It includes the following sections:

Note that Faceted Search extends the Search querying and response-handling mechanisms described in the Search Form Handlers chapter. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the information in that chapter before reading this chapter.