Create Fredhopper Trigger Types Programatically

Reading the docs, you would be led to believe that creating Fredhopper triggers was a matter of editing the trigger-types.xml file. It is however also possible to do this programatically – a trick that can come in handy should you not have access to that file on Production, or you wish to manage your triggers through automation.

The SmartTarget developers have created some handy helper classes:

com.tridion.smarttarget.triggers.TriggerTypesHelper – Can be used to create/retrieve Trigger Types
com.tridion.smarttarget.utils.LocalizationHelper – Can be used to manage Trigger Labels – the display text you see in the SmartTarget UI when selecting a value

In my implementation I actually packaged a JSP page up with the deployer war file (which already had the required SmartTarget configuration files needed for the SmartTarget API), which we call manually on every environment to create new triggers.

The URL parameters which should be added when requesting the JSP are as follows:

name – The trigger name
urlParam – The trigger url parameter
type – (Optional) The trigger type : text (default), number, date or boolean
values – (Optional) For triggers where the values are selected from a list, a comma delimited list of values
labels – (Optional) For triggers where the values are selected from a list, a comma delimited list of display values
multi – (Optional) When true (default is false) The trigger type is created as multiselect

<%@ page import="com.tridion.smarttarget.utils.LocalizationHelper" %> <%@ page import="com.tridion.smarttarget.triggers.TriggerTypesHelper" %> <%@ page import="com.tridion.smarttarget.entitymodel.trigger.type.TriggerType" %> <%@ page import="java.util.HashMap" %> <%@ page import="java.util.Arrays" %> <%@ page import="com.tridion.smarttarget.entitymodel.trigger.type.TriggerBasetypeListValues" %> <%@ page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8" language="java" %> <% String message = "Did nothing"; String name = request.getParameter("name"); String urlParam = request.getParameter("param"); String values = request.getParameter("vals"); String labels = request.getParameter("labels"); String type = request.getParameter("type");//text|number|date|boolean String multi = request.getParameter("multi");//true|false else if (name==null || urlParam==null ) { message = "Invalid query string. Expecting name=TriggerDisplayName&param=trigger_param_name"; } else { if (type==null) { type="text"; } if (multi==null) { multi = "true"; } TriggerTypesHelper triggerTypesHelper = new TriggerTypesHelper(); TriggerType triggerType = new TriggerType(); triggerType.setName(name); triggerType.setBasetype(type); triggerType.setUrlParam(urlParam); String[] triggerValues = values==null ? new String[0] : values.split(","); if (values!=null) { TriggerBasetypeListValues tblv = new TriggerBasetypeListValues(); tblv.setMultiselect(Boolean.valueOf(multi)); tblv.getValues().addAll(Arrays.asList(triggerValues)); triggerType.setListOfValues(tblv); } try { boolean success = triggerTypesHelper.addTriggerType(triggerType); if (success) { message = "Trigger type " + name + " created/updated successfully with " + triggerValues.length + " values. "; } } catch (Exception ex) { message = "Exception, but trigger may be created OK: " + ex.getMessage(); } if (labels!=null) { String[] triggerValueLabels = labels.split(","); LocalizationHelper localizationHelper = new LocalizationHelper(); //Seems to throw an exception if there are > 1 values/labels so we add //one by one for(int i=0;i<triggerValues.length;i++) { try { HashMap<String,String> segmentValuesAndLabels = new HashMap<String, String>(); segmentValuesAndLabels.put(triggerValues[i], triggerValueLabels[i]); localizationHelper.addTriggerTypeLabels(name, segmentValuesAndLabels, 1000); } catch(Exception ex) { //For some reason there is always an exception, but it works } } message += "Also created " + triggerValues.length + " labels"; } } %> <html> <head> <title>Manage Trigger Values</title> </head> <body> <h1>Manage Trigger Values</h1> <p>You can check trigger values using the following URL on the Fredhopper server: /fredhopper/config/trigger-types</p> <p>You can check a trigger value label by using the folllowing kind of URL: /fredhopper/config/i18n/trigger-types/en_US/single/trigger-type/TriggerDisplayName/value/my-trigger-value</p> <p><%=message%></p> </body> </html>

In the future we might hook into the CMS, so we could, for example create a trigger type based on a category in Tridion (using the keyword keys as the trigger values, and title/descriptions as the trigger value labels) via a GUI extension (Category right click -> Sync Trigger Type). This would be the last step in removing IT involvement in trigger management.

One thought on “Create Fredhopper Trigger Types Programatically”

Thanks for posting this, Will. Do you happen to have a sample request for creating trigger types through the API? I ask b/c the only references that I’ve found for the objects in this article are in JSP. All of our stuff is in C#, so I’m hoping to be able to provide this capability using some custom classes in C#

The only examples that I have found, are the examples for renaming the trigger-type (providing an alias) or adjusting a trigger-type value.

Your help would be greatly appreciated!

SDL Tridion Developer

SDL Tridion development and knowledge sharing blog, actively maintained by a number of SDL Tridion community experts.

Create Fredhopper Trigger Types Programatically

One thought on “Create Fredhopper Trigger Types Programatically”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply