E-Commerce Product Catalog

This example demonstrates how to model and query a product catalog using Fluree's graph database capabilities. You'll learn how to represent hierarchical categories, products with variants, and customer reviews—common patterns in any e-commerce application.

The Scenario

Alex is building an online store and needs to:

• Organize products into hierarchical categories (e.g., Electronics → Phones → Smartphones)
• Support product variants (different sizes, colors, storage options)
• Allow customers to leave reviews
• Search and filter products efficiently

Graph databases excel at these tasks because relationships between entities (product → category → parent category) are first-class citizens, making traversals fast and queries intuitive.

Schema Overview

The catalog consists of five main entity types connected through relationships:

graph LR p(Product) -->|category| c(Category) c -->|parentCategory| pc(Category) p -->|brand| b(Brand) p -->|variants| v(ProductVariant) r(Review) -->|product| p r -->|reviewer| cust(Customer)

Entities

Entity	Description
Category	Hierarchical product categories with optional parent
Brand	Manufacturers or brand names
Product	Main product with base info, linked to category and brand
ProductVariant	Specific SKU with color, size, storage, price, stock
Customer	Registered user who can leave reviews
Review	Rating and text feedback linked to product and customer

Example Product

Here's how a product is represented in the catalog:

{

"id": "ecom:products/smartphone-pro-x",

"type": "ecom:Product",

"schema:name": "SmartPhone Pro X",

"schema:description": "Flagship smartphone with advanced camera system...",

"schema:sku": "SPX-001",

"ecom:category": { "id": "ecom:categories/electronics/phones/smartphones" },

"ecom:brand": { "id": "ecom:brands/techpro" },

"ecom:basePrice": 999.99,

"ecom:variants": [

{

"id": "ecom:variants/spx-128-black",

"type": "ecom:ProductVariant",

"ecom:color": "Midnight Black",

"ecom:storage": "128GB",

"ecom:price": 999.99,

"ecom:stockQuantity": 45,

"schema:sku": "SPX-128-BLK"

}

]

}

Key observations:

• Linked data: The product references its category and brand by ID, enabling graph traversal
• Embedded variants: Product variants are nested within the product
• Mixed vocabularies: We use schema: (schema.org) for standard fields and ecom: for domain-specific ones

Category Hierarchy

Categories form a tree structure through the parentCategory relationship:

Electronics

├── Phones

│ └── Smartphones

├── Laptops

└── Audio

Clothing

├── Men's Clothing

└── Women's Clothing

Home & Garden

└── Kitchen

This structure enables powerful queries like "find all products in Electronics and its subcategories."

What You'll Learn

In the following pages, you'll explore:

1. Querying - Browse products, filter by category, search by price, and calculate average ratings
2. Transactions - Add new products, update inventory, and manage reviews

tip

The hierarchical category structure and graph relationships make this dataset perfect for understanding how Fluree handles real-world e-commerce patterns.