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Canberk Soner avatar image
Canberk Soner asked

Using multiple catalogs for item types

Because we cannot specify which items to get when getting catalog data, I am planning to have an item catalog for each general item category. Such as weapons, characters and item attachments. I'd like to do this because, for example, item attachments will be more frequently updated, so the client's item attachment cache will be invalidated more often. It sounds like a waste of traffic to receive everything from the web api when I only want to get some of the items.

I'm just not sure if this is how catalogs are supposed to be used. Any ideas?

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Andy avatar image
Andy answered

Your proposal could work, though it wasn't the original vision for how Catalog versions would work. Your other option is to set up Stores for your different item types. There are cons to both approaches, though. Using type-specific catalogs will limit your ability to version items as your game grows and changes. Using stores, though, will potentially have adverse effects on any plans you might have around in-game commerce. The best choice depends on your longer term plans for your game, but for now, you could go either way.

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Andy avatar image Andy ♦♦ commented ·

Brendan pointed out to me that receipt validation in mobile stores can only run against your primary catalog. That means that if you have monetization features on your roadmap, partitioning your whole catalog by item type may not be feasible. At the end of the day, the intent of a catalog is that each is a version of the same catalog. Moving away from that meaning could lead to unforeseen side-effects.

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Canberk Soner avatar image Canberk Soner Andy ♦♦ commented ·

Thanks for the reply. Are there any plans to allow us to query a catalog by tags or item class etc. instead of just getting the entire catalog? Is there an open feature request for that so I can vote?

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brendan avatar image brendan Canberk Soner commented ·

Yes, we have a backlog item to support that. I'm not seeing a Feature Request in that forum section for this specific feature, so if you do want to create one for that, it would be helpful to see how many developers would find it useful.

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