impex files for addon's, how to handle?

[Former Member]

I am working on making a full copy of the powertools site so I can start customizing it. In digging around I have discovered that many, many addon's have their own set of impex files. For example, when I look into commerceorgaddon, in the import folder I find a folder for all four of the sites I have seen: apparel-de, apparel-uk, electonics, and powertools.

It turns out they are named the same thing as what is in my own initialdata project, one is import/contentCatalogs/powertoolsContentCatalog/cms-content.impex.

Since I want to copy this into my own site, should I rename the file to something like cms-content-commerceorgaddond.impex and then make sure it gets added to the list in my SystemSetup, or... is there a better way? I am guessing there is a better way I am simply am missing it.

[arvind-kumar_avinash · Accepted solution]

An addon may be relevant for one or more storefronts e.g. commerceorgaddon is relevant for all the storefronts which you have mentioned and therefore it provides you with the data which will be applicable for applying the addon to these storefronts. You can check another addon say, accountsummaryaddon which is relevant for only powertools storefront and therefore, you won't find the impexes corresponding to other storefronts you have mentioned. It is assumed that a project (or learner) may start with installing one or more of the OOTB (Out Of The Box) storefronts and may apply these addons (either automatically, using the recipe or manually, using ant addoninstall) and therefore SAP Commerce (Hybris) provides the addon data relevant for the OOTB storefront.

You should not change anything in the OOTB extensions or addons. If you need to add new features or override the existing features, you should create your own extensions or addons with the relevant templates. You can create your own copy (to be placed in your custom extension or addon) of an impex from the OOTB extensions or addons.

Suggested reading: https://help.sap.com/viewer/b490bb4e85bc42a7aa09d513d0bcb18e/1905/en-US/8adc7ca3866910148ddfe860464f...

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

That is very helpful, thank you, I have not seen that page on Addon, so thank you for directing me to it, it explains a lot of other questions I have on that topic. The core of my question is really about impex files more than addon: Is there a standard impex convention for naming and placing of impex files? I see all the OOTB and default initialdata have the import/coredata/... or import/sampledata/...

Too early in the morning today, after following some other posts on impex files, I saw something (which I cannot find now) that talked about "essential" impex files and non-essential impex files. It went on to talk about how to set regular expressions in the properties files to find impex files. The documentation hinted at a convension, but it is very different from what I am seeing in the OOTB stuff.

Then it dawned on me that both the import services are extending SampleDataImportService, rather than AbstractDataImportService, which got me thinking: could the layout of impex files in the OOTB simply be how Hybris set up the sample impex but not be "the convention"?

[arvind-kumar_avinash · Accepted solution]

Please check the following links:

1. https://help.sap.com/viewer/3fb5dcdfe37f40edbac7098ed40442c0/1905/en-US/3a70c2daa401490ea3a303771511...
2. https://help.sap.com/viewer/3fb5dcdfe37f40edbac7098ed40442c0/1905/en-US/9236d781bd6a4330ad12dbc3b888...l