OFBIZ Looking to create parent child relationships between products

Question

Here is a hypothetical problem to outline what I am looking for.

Let's say I am selling customizable jellybean gift baskets. At the time of purchase, the customer chooses a gift basket and then decides how many beans they want in it. Each bean, in turn, may be customized from a list of various features. There are too many possible bean feature configurations for each jelly bean to reasonably be represented as a predefined "feature" of the gift basket. What's more, selling the basket and beans as separate items runs into a problem if the customer is to purchase multiple baskets in the same order. How do I keep track of what (and how many) beans got to what basket?

I have been reading through various Ofbiz tutorials and documentation, looking for a solution to this. Product configuration and featuring do provide a partial solution but does not completely satisfy the question at the end of my example.

Do I need to extend the entity model to allow for these kinds of product-to-product associations? Or is their already something out there that can address my issue?

Answer 1

There are many ways products in Ofbiz can relate to each other. Please take a look at Association Type ID drop-down list in Product->Association in Catalog Manager application.

For example:

1. Product A can be a Variant Product to Product B. [Will most fit for your case]
2. Product A can be Complementary or Cross-Sell to Product B.
3. Product A can be Upgrade or Up-Sell to Product B.
4. Product A can be associated as Also Bought with Product B.

etc .etc.

However looking at your requirement I am recommending, what you should is to:

• Setup a virtual product as base jelly product with all common features, configurations and attributes
• Setup multiple variant product as you need with specific feature, attributes added per physical jelly bean product.

Answer 2

OFBiz product data model is very flexible and can handle really complex cases. Even if it is not supported OOTB it can be done by costumizing the screesns and shoppingcart code. The closest to what you are describing are gift basket product or may be a configurable product which options are virtual products.