Developer forum

Hi Steve

Facets is a list of possible values of a given field in the index for each document (product) that has been found. If a field does not have a value for given product (document), it will not be indexed and cannot show up as a facet. So that leaves you with 2 options I can think of to get products with no variants.

1. You can add a parameter and an expression on the query where you search for products where IsVariant = False. This is not a facet - that would give you a seperate search parameter that you would have to put into the template or so.
2. You can make an IndexBuilderExtender that will change the value of the variant group field when a product does not have variants (or create a new field for this facet). In this way you can index a value "No variants" in the variant field if none is present. That will give you an extra facet option for products with no variant - something like this (untested)

class IndexBuilderExtenderExample : IndexBuilderExtenderBase<ProductIndexBuilder>
    {
        public override void ExtendDocument(IndexDocument document)
        {
            if (document.ContainsKey("ID"))
            {
                string productid = (string)document["ID"];
            }

            if (document.ContainsKey("VariantGroupSystemName"))
            {
                string variantName = (string)document["VariantGroupSystemName"];
                document.Add("VariantGroupSystemName_ForFacet", variantName);
            }else{
                document.Add("VariantGroupSystemName_ForFacet", "No variant");
                           }

            //document.Add("CustomField", DateTime.Now);
        }
    }

Hi Nicolai, 

Thanks again for your response that was the advice that we needed. We used the info from this page: https://doc.dynamicweb.com/training-certification/t3-platform-developer/t3-platform-developer/3-5-extending-indexing#sideNavTitle1-1-1-3, combined with your example to extend the index and show a custom facet option. Very cool.

Cheers