Work with legacy catalogs

Legacy catalogs are a type of secondary catalogs that provide custom views into the Product Catalog.

This section applies to Open Storefront Framework (OSF) and Storefront Classic.

As the name implies, legacy catalogs are an older style of Commerce catalog. Release 21A of Commerce includes a new type of secondary catalog called a filtered catalog. To learn how and why to use filtered catalogs to provide views into your Product Catalog, see Work with filtered catalogs.

By default, Commerce includes a single catalog called Product Catalog. Legacy catalogs are secondary catalogs that provide custom views into the Product Catalog. Unlike independent catalogs, which can contain different collections and products, legacy catalogs reference only products and collections that are already in the Product Catalog.

You must use the Admin API (see Create legacy catalogs) to create new legacy catalogs, but you can edit and delete them in the administration interface (see Edit and delete legacy catalogs). You cannot convert a legacy catalog to an independent catalog.

You can assign legacy catalogs to sites or, if your store supports account-based commerce, to business accounts. You assign legacy catalogs in the same way you assign independent catalogs. See Create or update an account contract to learn how to assign a catalog to a business account. See Enter basic store information to learn how to assign a catalog to a site.

This section includes the following topics:

Understand legacy catalog structure

In a Commerce instance that supports legacy catalogs, there are a number of tasks that you can perform only in the Product Catalog:

View details for a product or a collection.
Create a new product or collection.
Edit or delete an existing product or collection.
Rearrange products in a collection or rearrange collection hierarchy.
Access the following options from the Manage Catalogs menu: Product Types, Price Groups, Inventory, and Upload Media.

Any changes you make in the Product Catalog are automatically applied to all legacy catalogs that include the items that were changed. For example, if you update the Product Catalog by adding a new product to a collection that is part of a catalog associated with one of your country stores, the new product automatically appears in that legacy catalog. Remember that you must publish any changes you make to catalogs before they will appear on your stores.

Commerce does not index legacy catalogs for storefront search.

Edit and delete legacy catalogs

Although you must use the Admin API to create new legacy catalogs, you can edit and delete them on the Catalog page in the administration interface. See Create legacy catalogs for more information about creating these catalogs.

You can change a legacy catalog’s name and associated collections, but you cannot change its ID. You can delete a catalog that is not associated with any sites or accounts. You cannot delete the Product Catalog.

To edit or delete a legacy catalog:

Select the catalog to edit or delete in one of the following ways:
- On the Catalog page, select a catalog from the drop-down list at the top of the catalog page to display the catalog.
- On the Catalog page, click the Manage Catalogs button and select All Catalogs. Click the name of the catalog you want to edit.
To edit the catalog, click Edit Catalog, then change the catalog name or its collections. Click Save when you finish making changes.
To delete the catalog, click Edit Catalog, then click the Delete button.
If the catalog is already associated with accounts or sites, you must first remove it from all accounts or sites before you can delete it. See Work with account contracts for information about removing a catalog from an account. See Configure Sites for information about associating catalogs with sites.