How are option ID's generated?

[JoeMatkin]

We need to know how option ID's are generated as we create an option in our CMS and then send that option to Swell so it can create the variants and then we receive the variants back from Swell and put them into our CMS.

If we send just the option name to Swell we get some issues so we are thinking it's due to us not having an ID and just sending the name. We tried UUID library to generate id's and although it fixed some issue it created others, thanks.

{ "options": [ { "id": "What library to generate this?", "name": "metals", "values": [ { "id": "What library to generate this?", "name": "Platinum" } ], "variant": true, "input_type": "select" }, { "id": "What library to generate this?", "name": "stoneShapes", "values": [ { "id": "What library to generate this?", "name": "Round" } ], "variant": true, "input_type": "select" } ] }

[ericingram]

@JoeMatkin we use Mongo Object IDs (data type is objectid in models)

You can use this npm library to generate them: https://www.npmjs.com/package/bson-objectid. Note creating any record or object will always accept a custom object ID if supplied in the request

[JoeMatkin]

Hmm is it possible you're just updating an existing variant (i.e. an element in the option array) and so it doesn't trigger variant.created, but it would trigger variant.updated?

I don't think that's the case, I'll provide an example

Existing variant:
Metal: Rose Gold
Stone Shape: Round

Remove option "Rose Gold"
Add option "Platinum"

Publish in Sanity CMS

Doesn't create webhook but changes in Swell

[JoeMatkin]

Ahhhh this is spot on, the options are different so I'm not sure why it's reusing the same variant but it does reuse (using the same variant id)

So as you say it triggers the variant.update webhook

But I still don't understand why the variant ID is being reused, the variant options are different

[ericingram]

@JoeMatkin I think it's because variants have a field called option_value_ids which tell the variant which options specifically make up the variant. So if the options change (for example it could just be fixing a typo) then it's still linked to the same variant.

You could try to ensure the options are new, not using the same ID, by using $set

[JoeMatkin]

Hi @ericingram most of our issue during building the sync functions where caused by us using alternative ID generators instead of BSON object ID as you suggested.

I think it would be helpful to add to the docs that the ID in options should be generated by a BSON object ID otherwise you will get errors such as option.id being null, at least this is what we experienced.

Thanks

[ericingram]

Good idea @JoeMatkin - we'll consider adding it