Integrating Liferay Commerce using an ETL (Part 2: Configuring Liferay Commerce in 3 steps)

DISCLAIMER: This blog  post has Spanish and English version.

Finished the step of Part 1: Installation and configuration of Talend Open Studio


First off, we will need a Liferay Commerce Website to be able to upload products. The fastest way to achieve this is to use one of the Commerce accelerators (for Liferay's old school people, they’re similar to a Site Template). Let’s go through the process step by step:

1. In your Liferay Portal, create a Commerce Website with the “Minium” accelerator.

  • Log-in with a Portal admin user.
  • Click on “Control Panel” > “Sites” > “Sites” > “+” and select “Minium”


 

2. As well as creating a site, this will also create a channel and a catalog (as shown in the images below), which are necessary for loading products. In this next step, we will retrieve the “catalogId” that we will need to use later. 

Note: We will not go into Liferay Commerce settings here, that’s why we use the accelerator to create our Website. If you want to find out more, you can consult the documentation

Channels

“At this point, we’d like to highlight the Channel configuration. It is associated with a website (which we have created with the accelerator) and  it has a defined currency. The channel in our case will only have the ability to see the products created with the configured currency.”

Catalog 

“For the catalog, the  “catalogId”  will be needed to load the products. Look at the language settings of our products and currency (Commerce is multilanguage, like other Liferay entities and also multicurrency). ”

Note: If you are wondering, how do I get the “ catalogId”? You can check the Database and look for it in the “CommerceCatalog” table. Also in the URL that is generated when you click on the Catalog from the Liferay Control Panel (as in the image above).The link will be generated as the following image, with the parameter "commerceCatalogId = XXXX". P.S.: The “ catalogid” is visible in the catalogue page from Liferay Commerce  2.1 forward.

Since we are talking about Liferay Commerce and we are logged-in on the platform, let's take a look at the types of products (productType) there are. They will be necessary when we get to the load process.

3. You can check them on “Control Panel” > “Commerce” > “Products” > “+ blue button” .


 

Note: Another thing you may also be wondering is, And how do I know the “productType”? So far, Commerce by default has these 3 types of products that are represented by the Strings: "simple", "grouped" and "virtual". More information on product types can be found  in the documentation  


As you have seen, configuring Liferay Commerce is a task that can be done in less than 5 minutes thanks to the responsive Accelerators and Themes that are offered out-of-the-box. “SpeedWell” is a  B2C focused accelerator and “Minium”  is B2B focused.

Now we have completed the minimum setup on Liferay Commerce necessary to continue with the integration. In the following Blog, we will work with Liferay components for Talend Open Studio (which is what we’re really interested in).

PS: Thanks to Bernard Mc Closkey (Commerce Solution Architect for EMEA) for helping me on the translation of this Blog post.