This bundle extends the functionality of eZ with a recommendation engine, powered by YOOCHOOSE. It allows you to track the way visitors use your website and suggests recommended content to them based on their behavior.
See YOOCHOOSE documentation to learn how the recommendation engine works from the YOOCHOOSE side.
- PHP 5.4.4 or higher
- Symfony 2.7 or higher Symfony 2.x version
- eZ Publish v5.4.1+ or eZ Platform/Enterprise v1.0+, with the REST API configured to use sessions and publicly open to the YOOCHOOSE servers.
- A YOOCHOOSE subscription
This bundle is independent from the ezrecommendation
extension used in eZ Publish legacy, and does not require it.
1. Run the following from your eZ Publish / eZ Platform installation root (here with most recent 1.x release):
composer require --no-update ezsystems/recommendation-bundle:^2.0
composer update --prefer-dist
2. Enable the bundle in ezpublish/EzPublishKernel.php
(for eZ Publish 5.x) or app/AppKernel.php
(for eZ Platform):
$bundles = array(
// existing bundles
new EzSystems\RecommendationBundle\EzSystemsRecommendationBundle()
);
3. Import additional routing by adding the following lines to your routing.yml
file:
recommendationBundleRestRoutes:
resource: "@EzSystemsRecommendationBundle/Resources/config/routing_rest.yml"
prefix: %ezpublish_rest.path_prefix%
Keep in mind that legacy support is disabled by default. To enable legacy search engine (requires ezpublish-kernel
bundle) uncomment these lines in the bundle's services.yml
:
# ez_recommendation.legacy.search_engine:
# class: ezpSearchEngine
# factory_class: EzSystems\RecommendationBundle\eZ\Publish\LegacySearch\LegacySearchFactory
# factory_method: build
# arguments: [@ezpublish_legacy.kernel]
# ez_recommendation.legacy.recommendation_search_engine:
# class: EzSystems\RecommendationBundle\eZ\Publish\LegacySearch\RecommendationLegacySearchEngine
# arguments:
# - @ez_recommendation.client.yoochoose_notifier
# - @ez_recommendation.legacy.search_engine
# ez_recommendation.legacy.search_configuration_mapper:
# class: EzSystems\RecommendationBundle\eZ\Publish\LegacySearch\ConfigurationMapper
# arguments:
# - @ez_recommendation.legacy.recommendation_search_engine
# - @ezpublish.siteaccess
# tags:
# - { name: kernel.event_subscriber }
The bundle's configuration is siteaccess-aware. This is an example of settings (config.yml):
ez_recommendation:
system:
default:
yoochoose:
customer_id: "12345"
license_key: "1234-5678-9012-3456-7890"
server_uri: "http://example.com"
recommender:
included_content_types: ["blog", "article"]
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
yoochoose.customer_id | Your YOOCHOOSE customer ID. |
yoochoose.license_key | Your YOOCHOOSE license key. |
server_uri | The URI your site's REST API can be accessed from. |
recommender.included_content_types | Content Types on which the tracking script will be shown. See Tracking below for more information. |
If the Content item's author or image are stored in a different field, you can specify it in parameters.yml
Format for ez_recommendation.field_identifiers
:
ez_recommendation.field_identifiers:
{field fetched by controller (image or author)}
{content type}: {field with value}
A working example:
ez_recommendation.field_identifiers:
author:
article: authors
image:
article: thumbnail
blog_post: main_image
You can select advanced options for YOOCHOOSE back end using the following settings:
ez_recommendation:
api_endpoint: 'https://admin.yoochoose.net'
recommender:
api_endpoint: '//reco.yoochoose.net'
consume_timeout: 20
tracking:
api_endpoint: 'http://event.yoochoose.net'
script_url: 'cdn.yoochoose.net/yct.js'
Changing any of the parameters above without a valid reason will break all calls to YOOCHOOSE. It can be useful to test the API by mocking the service, or if you have a hosted version of YOOCHOOSE Recommendation service.
While Symfony dev
environment keeps track of changes to yml files, prod
does not, so to make sure Symfony reads the new config, clear cache.
For eZ Publish 5.x:
php ezpublish/console --env=prod clear:cache
For eZ Platform:
php app/console --env=prod clear:cache
Your content structure must be mapped to the YOOCHOOSE domain model. This must be done in collaboration with YOOCHOOSE.
Public content is automatically indexed. When necessary, eZ Publish 5.x/eZ Platform will notify YOOCHOOSE of changes to content. Initial import is to be managed with your YOOCHOOSE sales representative. Note that your server's REST API will need to be open to the YOOCHOOSE servers for indexing to be possible.
Events from the site need to be sent to YOOCHOOSE so that recommendations can be adapted to visitors. Tracking can be set up in multiple ways, depending on existing constraints.
EzSystemsRecommendationBundle
delivers a Twig extension which helps integrate the tracking functionality into your site.
1. Place the following snippet of code somewhere in the HEAD section of your header template:
{% if content is defined %}
{{ yc_track_user(content.id) }}
{% endif %}
2. Configure settings under the recommender.included_content_types
parameter (see: default_settings.yml
file delivered with this bundle). Here you can define for which Content Types tracking script will be shown.
In the YOOCHOOSE documentation you can find more information about tracking in general and about the generic asynchronous javascript tracker.
Additionally, in case of missing content owner ID, there's an option in default_settings.yml
to set up the default content author:
ez_recommendation.default.author_id: 14 # ID: 14 is default ID of admin user
In order to allow displaying recommendations on your site you must add portions of scripts which will integrate the recommender engine with your site.
Implementation is very easy and can be performed in just a few steps (assuming that EzSystemsRecommendationBundle
is properly configured and enabled in EzPublishKernel.php
or AppKernel.php
):
1. Add the following JavaScript assets to your header template:
{% javascripts
...
'%kernel.root_dir%/../vendor/components/handlebars.js/handlebars.min.js'
'@EzSystemsRecommendationBundle/Resources/public/js/recommendationtemplaterenderer.js'
'@EzSystemsRecommendationBundle/Resources/public/js/recommendationtemplatehelper.js'
'@EzSystemsRecommendationBundle/Resources/public/js/recommendationrestclient.js'
%}
2. Place a dedicated Twig helper in place where you want to display recommendations:
{{ yc_show_recommendations(
contentId = content.id,
scenario = '',
limit = '',
contentType = '',
template = '',
fields = []
) }}
Parameter | Type | Description |
---|---|---|
contentId |
int | In content-based views the Twig variable holding the content ID (the content you want to get recommendations for). |
scenario |
string | Scenario used to display recommendations. You can create custom scenarios at the YOOCHOOSE dashboard. |
limit |
int | Number of recommendations to show. |
contentType |
string | Content Types you are expecting in response. |
template |
string | HandleBars template name (your templates are stored in the ezsystems/recommendation-bundle/Resources/public/views directory. Take a look at default.html.twig which includes a default template that can be used to prepare customized versions). |
fields |
array | Fields which are required and will be requested from the recommender engine. These field names are also used inside HandleBars templates. |
Sample integration can take the following form:
{{ yc_show_recommendations(
contentId = content.id,
scenario = 'popular',
limit = 5,
contentType = 'article',
template = 'default',
fields = ['ez_publishedDate', 'ez_url', 'title', 'image', 'author', 'intro']
) }}
You can also bypass named arguments using standard value passing as arguments.
The item ID is usually set to the viewed ContentId. Depending on requirements, it can be set to a different value, in collaboration with YOOCHOOSE.
Displaying image variations defined with image aliases is not currently supported out of the box.
You can work around this limitation by creating your own template (based on https://github.com/ezsystems/ezstudio-demo/blob/master/app/Resources/EzSystemsRecommendationBundle/views/recommendations.html.twig) or your own Twig extension (based on https://github.com/ezsystems/EzSystemsRecommendationBundle/blob/master/Twig/RecommendationTwigExtension.php#L214).
If you want to access a specific image alias through API, you need to add the image
parameter to the request url with name of alias as its value, for example:
/api/ezp/v2/ez_recommendation/v1/contenttypes/16?lang=eng-GB&fields=title,description,image,intro,name&page=1&page_size=20&image=rss
to retrieve the rss
alias of the image.
As of v1.6, one more parameter is available: sa
, which takes the siteaccess name and defines the siteaccess whose content will be displayed.
Most operations are logged via the ez_recommendation
Monolog channel. To log everything about Recommendation to dev.recommendation.log
, add the following to your config.yml
file:
monolog:
handlers:
ez_recommendation:
type: stream
path: "%kernel.logs_dir%/%kernel.environment%.recommendation.log"
channels: [ez_recommendation]
level: info
Tip: You can replace info
with debug
for more verbosity.