Attributes

Attributes in Sylius allow you to define shared traits among entities. For example, products within the same category may share common attributes, such as a book's number of pages, the brand of a T-shirt, or any other relevant detail.

Attribute

The Attribute model has a translatable name (for instance Book pages), code (book_pages) and type (integer). There are a few available types of an Attribute:

Type	Example Use Case
Text (default)	Brand of a T-shirt
Checkbox	Whether a T-shirt is made of cotton
Integer	Number of items in a set
Percent	Cotton percentage in clothing
Textarea	Detailed product description
Date	Movie release date
Datetime	Event date and time
Select	Book genre (multiple selection possible)

Non-translatable attribute

Some attributes (dates, author name) don’t need a different value in each locale. For those attributes, we introduced the possibility of disabling translation. Shop Owner declares values only once and regardless of the chosen locale customer will see a proper attribute value.

Once the attribute has disabled translatability it will erase attribute values in all locales for this attribute.

How to create an Attribute?

To give you a better insight into Attributes, let’s have a look at how to prepare and add an Attribute with a Product to the system programmatically.

To assign Attributes to Products firstly you will need a factory for ProductAttributes. The AttributeFactory has a special method createTyped($type), where $type is a string.

The Attribute needs a code and a name before it can be saved in the repository.

/** @var AttributeFactoryInterface $attributeFactory */
$attributeFactory = $this->container->get('sylius.factory.product_attribute');

/** @var AttributeInterface $attribute */
$attribute = $attributeFactory->createTyped('text');

$attribute->setName('Book cover');
$attribute->setCode('book_cover');

$this->container->get('sylius.repository.product_attribute')->add($attribute);

In order to assign value to your Attribute you will need a factory of ProductAttributeValues, use it to create a new value object.

/** @var FactoryInterface $attributeValueFactory */
$attributeValueFactory = $this->container->get('sylius.factory.product_attribute_value');

/** @var AttributeValueInterface $hardcover */
$hardcover = $attributeValueFactory->createNew();

Attach the new AttributeValue to your Attribute and set its value, which is what will be rendered in the front end.

$hardcover->setAttribute($attribute);

$hardcover->setValue('hardcover');

Finally, let’s find a product that will have your newly created attribute.

/** @var ProductInterface $product */
$product = $this->container->get('sylius.repository.product')->findOneBy(['code' => 'code']);

$product->addAttribute($hardcover);

Now let’s see what has to be done if you would like to add an attribute of integer type. Let’s find such a one in the repository, it will be for example the BOOK-PAGES attribute.

/** @var AttributeInterface $bookPagesAttribute */
$bookPagesAttribute = $this->container->get('sylius.repository.product_attribute')->findOneBy(['code' => 'BOOK-PAGES']);

/** @var AttributeValueInterface $pages */
$pages = $attributeValueFactory->createNew();

$pages->setAttribute($bookPagesAttribute);

$pages->setValue(500);

$product->addAttribute($pages);

After adding attributes remember to flush the product manager.

$this->container->get('sylius.manager.product')->flush();

Your Product will now have two Attributes.