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How to Customize Import Strategy

In this document, you’ll learn how to create a custom product import strategy either by overwriting the default strategy or creating your own.

Overview​

Product Import Strategy is essentially a batch job strategy. Medusa provides the necessary mechanisms to overwrite or create your own strategy.

Although this documentation specifically targets import strategies, you can use the same steps to overwrite any batch job strategy in Medusa, including export strategies.

Prerequisites​

Medusa Components​

It's assumed that you already have a Medusa backend installed and set up. If not, you can follow our quickstart guide to get started. The Medusa backend must also have an event bus module installed, which is available when using the default Medusa backend starter.

PostgreSQL​

If you use SQLite during your development, it’s highly recommended that you use PostgreSQL when working with batch jobs. Learn how to install PostgreSQL and configure it with your Medusa backend.

Overwrite Batch Job Strategy​

The steps required for overwriting a batch job strategy are essentially the same steps required to create a batch job strategy with a minor difference. For that reason, this documentation does not cover the basics of a batch job strategy.

If you’re interested to learn more about batch job strategies and how they work, please check out the Create Batch Job Strategy documentation.

1. Create a File​

You must store batch job strategies in the src/strategies directory of your Medusa backend. They are either TypeScript or JavaScript files.

So, for example, you can create the file src/strategies/import.ts.

2. Create a Class​

The batch job strategy class must extend the AbstractBatchJobStrategy class which you can import from Medusa’s core repository.

For example, you can define the following class in the file you created:

src/strategies/import.ts
import { 
  AbstractBatchJobStrategy, 
  BatchJobService,
} from "@medusajs/medusa"
import { EntityManager } from "typeorm"

class MyImportStrategy extends AbstractBatchJobStrategy {
  protected batchJobService_: BatchJobService
  protected manager_: EntityManager
  protected transactionManager_: EntityManager

  processJob(batchJobId: string): Promise<void> {
    throw new Error("Method not implemented.")
  }
  buildTemplate(): Promise<string> {
    throw new Error("Method not implemented.")
  }
}

export default MyImportStrategy

This is the base implementation of a batch job strategy. You can learn about all the different methods and properties in this documentation.

3. Set the batchType Property​

Every batch job strategy class must have the static property batchType defined. It determines the type of batch job this strategy handles.

Since only one batch job strategy can handle a batch job type, you can overwrite Medusa’s default batch job strategies by using the same batchType value in your custom strategy.

So, for example, to overwrite the product import strategy set the batchType property in your strategy to product-import:

class MyImportStrategy extends AbstractBatchJobStrategy {
  static batchType = "product-import"
  // ...
}

4. Define your Custom Functionality​

You can now define your custom functionality in your batch job strategy. For example, you can create custom import logic to import products.

Refer to the Create a Batch Job documentation to understand what properties and methods are required in your batch job strategy and how you can use them to implement your custom functionality.

5. Run Build Command​

Before you can test out your batch job strategy, you must run the build command:

npm run build

6. Test your Functionality​

Since you didn’t create a new batch job type and overwrote the functionality of the strategy, you can test out your functionality using the same steps used with the default strategy.

Specifically, since you create batch jobs using the Create Batch Job endpoint which accepts the batch job type as a body parameter, you just need to send the same type you used for this field. In the example of this documentation, the type would be product-import.

If you overwrote the import functionality, you can follow these steps to learn how to import products using the Admin APIs.

Create Custom Batch Job Strategy​

If you don’t want to overwrite Medusa’s batch job strategy, you can create a custom batch job strategy with a different batchType value. Then, use that type when you send a request to Create a Batch Job.

For more details on creating custom batch job strategies, please check out the Create Batch Job Strategy documentation.

See Also​