Get location and user specific prices

Question

We need to get location and user-specific prices in the SXA Storefront. These prices should also be available when calling the Commerce Engine directly for headless scenarios.

We add XDB facets to the contact on the Storefront side with location and a user specific id. We can retrieve these facets in custom versions of the list price and sell price calculation blocks in the Commer Engine project:

.ConfigurePipeline<ICalculateSellableItemListPricePipeline>(builder => builder.Replace<CalculateSellableItemListPriceBlock, ExternalSellableItemListPriceBlock>())
.ConfigurePipeline<ICalculateSellableItemSellPricePipeline>(builder => builder.Replace<CalculateSellableItemSellPriceBlock, ExternalSellableItemSellPriceBlock>())
.ConfigurePipeline<ICalculateVariationsListPricePipeline>(builder => builder.Replace<CalculateVariationsListPriceBlock, ExternalVariationsListPriceBlock>())
.ConfigurePipeline<ICalculateVariationsSellPricePipeline>(builder => builder.Replace<CalculateVariationsSellPriceBlock, ExternalVariationsSellPriceBlock>())

If we try to retrieve customer-specific information from the commerce context, that it is empty in the above blocks. CommerceContext.ContactId is empty...

After some investigation into for example ShopperId on the Storefront side we see the following:

Looking at usage:

So only the following Storefront side pipeline blocks do set the ShopperId (and ContactId):

Sitecore.Commerce.Engine.Connect.Pipelines.Orders.GetVisitorOrders
Sitecore.Commerce.Engine.Connect.Pipelines.Orders.TranslateOrderToEntity
Sitecore.Commerce.Engine.Connect.Pipelines.Carts.TranslateCartToEntity

So these headers (described in https://doc.sitecore.com/developers/100/sitecore-experience-commerce/en/service-api-headers.html) are NOT set by the pipelines used in showing products or product details.

Is there a way to add these headers ourselves (like is done in the above pipeline blocks) in for example the processSearchItems pipeline as used for processing the SXA search result items in the case of a product search (used for the product lister pages)?

If we look at pipeline Sitecore.Commerce.Engine.Connect.Pipelines.Orders.GetVisitorOrders we see:

And in the method TranslateOrderHeaders we see:

CommerceOrderHeader commerceOrderHeader = EntityFactory.Create<CommerceOrderHeader>("OrderHeader");
commerceOrderHeader.ExternalId = item.Id;
commerceOrderHeader.ShopName = item.ShopName;
commerceOrderHeader.Name = item.Name;
commerceOrderHeader.OrderID = item.OrderConfirmationId;
commerceOrderHeader.TrackingNumber = item.OrderConfirmationId;
commerceOrderHeader.Status = item.Status;
commerceOrderHeader.OrderDate = item.OrderPlacedDate.DateTime;

Don't know if this translates to HTTP headers in Commerce Engine requests, but seems to be in the right direction...

Answer 1

As described in the comment the solution is to inject a pipeline processor in the ProcessSearchItems pipeline in Sitecore XP side:

EnableTracker.cs:

using Sitecore.Analytics;
using Sitecore.XA.Feature.Search.Pipelines.ProcessSearchItems;

namespace Feature.SCP.CommerceCatalog.Pipelines.ProcessSearchItems
{
    /// <summary>
    /// The Tracker must be started to enable the communication of the ShopperId header
    /// to the commerce engine. The Tracker is not started in the case of the SXA product search
    /// executed as an AJAX call from Storefront. During the SXA product search the 
    /// ProcessSearchItems pipeline is executed, and before the 
    /// Sitecore.Commerce.XA.Feature.Catalog.Pipelines.Search.PrepareSearchItems processor
    /// the Tracker must be started.
    /// </summary>
    public class EnableTracker : ProcessSearchItemsProcessor
    {
        public override void Process(ProcessSearchItemsArgs args)
        {
            if (Tracker.Current == null && Tracker.Enabled)
            {
                Tracker.StartTracking();
            }
        }
    }
}

And register it BEFORE Sitecore.Commerce.XA.Feature.Catalog.Pipelines.Search.PrepareSearchItems where the prices for found products are retrieved:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
    <sitecore>
        <pipelines>
            <group groupName="experienceAccelerator">
                <pipelines>
                    <processSearchItems>
                        <processor type="Feature.SCP.CommerceCatalog.Pipelines.ProcessSearchItems.EnableTracker, Feature.SCP.CommerceCatalog" patch:before="processor[@type='Sitecore.Commerce.XA.Feature.Catalog.Pipelines.Search.PrepareSearchItems, Sitecore.Commerce.XA.Feature.Catalog']" resolve="true"/>

                    </processSearchItems>
                </pipelines>
            </group>
        </pipelines>
    </sitecore>
</configuration>

The question is: is this a bug or a feature? In the default price calculation the ShopperId (which equals the contact ID) is not needed...