Additional property

Additional Properties

Additional Properties is a general Hii Retail concept designed to handle any data need without requiring schema changes or additional development.

There are two main reasons to use Additional Properties:

To meet the needs of services consuming your data (e.g., POS, electronic shelf labels, label printing, reporting, stock management).
To enrich data with custom information for your own use cases (e.g., displaying extra info in a UI).

Most entities in Hii Retail support Additional Properties.

What is it?

Additional Properties is an array on the entity, allowing you to extend it with dynamic information. These are key-value pairs with metadata: Id (identifier) and Value (stored as a string).

Each property must have a correct data type for proper visualization and processing.

When displaying Additional Properties, always consider the data type to ensure correct rendering (e.g., show a checkbox for boolean values).

Example: The property "MyCustomProperty.IsVisibleInUI" with data type BOOL should be rendered as a checkbox.

How does it work?

Additional Properties defined on an entity are inherited by lower levels in a hierarchy or through distribution calculations.

For example, Item Categories with Additional Properties will inherit from their parent and propagate the accumulated set of properties to child categories and, eventually, to Items in that category.

Item Categories Additional Properties Inheritance

Set = Locally set Additional Property
Acc = Accumulated Additional Properties

This allows you to define default values at higher levels (like Item Categories), which are aggregated at lower levels. Items in a category receive all inherited properties, but if a property is also defined on the Item, the Item-level value takes precedence.