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Extend customer resources

Extend a customer profile to add more customer-specific information that your business needs.

Prerequisites​

If you want to follow along, you need the following items:

  • A Composable Commerce account and the Client ID and Client Secret of your store
  • Basic understanding of object-oriented programming or JavaScript
  • An access token

Step-by-step walkthrough​

The walkthrough shows you how to extend an existing resource, customers, with a core Flow so it can have all the JSON you want and need. For the purpose of this guide, weʼre going to create an entry field for customers to provide their delivery details.

  1. Create a Flow for the endpoint you want to extend: customers.
  2. Create Fields to add custom data.
  3. Create a customer that includes your custom data.
  4. Get the customer.
  5. Update the customer.

Create a core Flow​

Create a new Flow, called customers. The slug must match the plural name of the resource youʼre extending.

note

If you already have a Flow for customers, skip this step. You need the ID of the products Flow to continue.

curl -X POST https://useast.api.elasticpath.com/v2/flows \
     -H "Authorization:XXXX" \
     -H "Content-Type:application/json" \
     -d $'{
        "data":{
          "type":"flow",
          "name":"Customers",
          "slug":"customers",
          "description":"Extends the default customer object",
          "enabled":true
   }
}'

Take note of the Flow ID that is returned. You need the ID to create a Flow field.

Create a Field​

The Field is returned when you call the customer object. Replace FLOW-ID with the ID that was generated for the customers Flow. The field is not required, making an entry optional for customers to fill in.

caution

If you specify a field as required then customers cannot be added to Commerce using Commerce Manager. If you want to be able to add customers to Commerce using Commerce Manager, then you must specify required as false.

curl -X POST https://useast.api.elasticpath.com/v2/fields \
     -H "Authorization: XXXX" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d $'{
          "data": {
            "type": "field",
            "name": "Delivery Details",
            "slug": "delivery_details",
            "field_type": "string",
            "description": "customers delivery details",
            "required": false,
            "default": 0,
            "enabled": true,
            "order": 1,
            "relationships": {
              "flow": {
                "data": {
                  "type": "flow",
                  "id": "FLOW-ID"
               }
             }
           }
         }
       }'

Create a customer with your custom field​

Now, we need to start adding data to the customer profile. Call the customers endpoint and adding the new key for the custom field in the data object with the value for the delivery details. Take a note of the ID returned for your customer.

curl -X POST https://useast.api.elasticpath.com/v2/customers \
     -H "Authorization: XXXX" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d $'{
        "data": {
          "type": "customer",
          "name": "Ron Swanson",
          "email": "ron.swanson@gmail.com",
          "delivery_details": "Do NOT leave in a government building"
        }
      }'

Get the customer​

Now that weʼve extended the customer profile and created our first customer with the custom field, we can make a call to get that customer with the delivery details.

curl -X GET https://useast.api.elasticpath.com/v2/customers/:customer-id \
     -H "Authorization: XXXX"
     -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Update the customer​

To update the delivery details, pass the field you want to update to the customer endpoint.

curl -X PUT https://useast.api.elasticpath.com/v2/customers/:customer-id \
     -H "Authorization: XXXX" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d $'{
        "data": {
          "type": "customer",
          "id": "CUSTOMER-ID",
          "delivery_details": "Leave in Leslie Knope’s office"
        }
      }'

Further reading​