EAV and extension attributes

There are two types of attributes you can use to extend Magento functionality:

• Custom and Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) attributes—Custom attributes are those added on behalf of a merchant. For example, a merchant might need to add attributes to describe products, such as shape or volume. A merchant can add these attributes in the Admin panel. See the merchant documentation for information about managing custom attributes.

  Custom attributes are a subset of EAV attributes. Objects that use EAV attributes typically store values in several MySQL tables. The Customer and Catalog modules are the primary models that use EAV attributes. Other modules, such as ConfigurableProduct, GiftMessage, and Tax, use the EAV functionality for Catalog.

• Extension attributes. Extension attributes are new in Magento 2. They are used to extend functionality and often use more complex data types than custom attributes. These attributes do not appear in the Admin.

EAV and custom attributes

CustomAttributesDataInterface defines the methods that are called to get and set custom attributes, including getCustomAttributes().

A module has a set of built-in attributes that are always available. The Catalog module has several attributes that are defined as EAV attributes, but are treated as built-in attributes. These attributes include:

• attribute_set_id
• created_at
• group_price
• media_gallery
• name
• price
• sku
• status
• store_id
• tier_price
• type_id
• updated_at
• visibility
• weight

In this case, when getCustomAttributes() is called, the system returns only custom attributes that are not in this list.

The Customer module provides a system option for its attributes. As a result, the getCustomAttributes() method only returns those EAV attributes that are not defined as system attributes. If you create custom attributes programmatically, set the system option to ‘false’ if you want to include the attribute in the custom_attributes array.

As of version 2.3.4, Magento caches all system EAV attributes as they are retrieved. This behavior is defined in each affected module’s di.xml file as the attributesForPreload argument for <type name="Magento\Eav\Model\Config">. Developers can cache custom EAV attributes by running the bin/magento config:set dev/caching/cache_user_defined_attributes 1 command. This can also be done from the Admin while in Develop mode by setting Stores > Settings Configuration > Advanced > Developer > Caching Settings > Cache User Defined Attributes to Yes. Caching EAV attributes while retrieving improves performance as it decreases the amount of insert/select requests to the DB, but it increases the cache network size.

Adding Customer EAV attribute for backend only

Customer EAV attributes are created using a data patches.

Both the save() and getResource() methods for Magento\Framework\Model\AbstractModel have been marked as @deprecated since 2.1 and should no longer be used.

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<?php
/**
 * Copyright © Magento, Inc. All rights reserved.
 * See COPYING.txt for license details.
 */

namespace Magento\Customer\Setup\Patch\Data;

use Magento\Customer\Model\Customer;
use Magento\Customer\Setup\CustomerSetupFactory;
use Magento\Framework\App\ResourceConnection;
use Magento\Framework\Setup\ModuleDataSetupInterface;
use Magento\Framework\Setup\Patch\DataPatchInterface;
use Magento\Framework\Setup\Patch\PatchVersionInterface;

/**
 * Class add customer example attribute to customer
 */
class AddCustomerExampleAttribute implements DataPatchInterface
{
    /**
     * @var ModuleDataSetupInterface
     */
    private $moduleDataSetup;

    /**
     * @var CustomerSetupFactory
     */
    private $customerSetupFactory;

    /**
     * @param ModuleDataSetupInterface $moduleDataSetup
     * @param CustomerSetupFactory $customerSetupFactory
     */
    public function __construct(
        ModuleDataSetupInterface $moduleDataSetup,
        CustomerSetupFactory $customerSetupFactory
    ) {
        $this->moduleDataSetup = $moduleDataSetup;
        $this->customerSetupFactory = $customerSetupFactory;
    }

    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     */
    public function apply()
    {
        $customerSetup = $this->customerSetupFactory->create(['setup' => $this->moduleDataSetup]);
        $customerSetup->addAttribute(Customer::ENTITY, 'attribute_code', [
            // Attribute options (list of options can be found below)
        ]);
    }

    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     */
    public static function getDependencies()
    {
        return [
            UpdateIdentifierCustomerAttributesVisibility::class,
        ];
    }

    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     */
    public function getAliases()
    {
        return [];
    }
}

The scope of the Customer custom attribute is Global only, while other entities support the Global, Website, and StoreView scopes.

Extension attributes

Use ExtensibleDataInterface to implement extension attributes. In your code, you must define getExtensionAttributes() and setExtensionAttributes(*ExtensionInterface param).

public function getExtensionAttributes();

Most likely, you will want to extend interfaces defined in the Api/Data directory of a Magento module.

Declare extension attributes

You must create a <Module>/etc/extension_attributes.xml file to define a module’s extension attributes:

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<config>
    <extension_attributes for="Path\To\Interface">
        <attribute code="name_of_attribute" type="datatype">
           <resources>
              <resource ref="permission"/>
           </resources>
           <join reference_table="" reference_field="" join_on_field="">
              <field>fieldname</field>
           </join>
        </attribute>
    </extension_attributes>
</config>

where:

Searching extension attributes

The system uses a join directive to add external attributes to a collection and to make the collection filterable. The join element in the extension_attributes.xml file defines which object fields and the database table/column to use as the source of a search.

In the following example, an attribute named stock_item of type Magento\CatalogInventory\Api\Data\StockItemInterface is being added to the Magento\Catalog\Api\Data\ProductInterface.

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<extension_attributes for="Magento\Catalog\Api\Data\ProductInterface">
    <attribute code="stock_item" type="Magento\CatalogInventory\Api\Data\StockItemInterface">
        <join reference_table="cataloginventory_stock_item" reference_field="product_id" join_on_field="entity_id">
            <field>qty</field>
        </join>
    </attribute>
</extension_attributes>

When getList() is called, it returns a list of ProductInterfaces. When it does this, the code populates the stock_item with a joined operation in which the StockItemInterface’s qty property comes from the cataloginventory_stock_item table where the Product’s entity_Id is joined with the cataloginventory_stock_item.product_id column.

When you add search extension attributes, you must consider that this can cause ambiguity in the selection of fields in the resulting SQL query when using REST APIs. In these cases, the REST call must explicitly specify both the table name and field to use for selecting.

For example, the following configuration may introduce ambiguity when getting orders via REST API. The configuration constructs a query like SELECT .... FROM sales_order AS main_table LEFT JOIN sales_order. This creates an ambiguity for all columns from the sales_order table in that MySQL cannot determine if it should take them from the main_table or from the sales_order from the JOIN clause.

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<config>
    <extension_attributes for="Magento\Sales\Api\Data\OrderInterface">
        <attribute code="field1" type="int">
            <join reference_table="sales_order" join_on_field="entity_id" reference_field="entity_id">
                <field>field1</field>
            </join>
        </attribute>
    </extension_attributes>
</config>

REST API Endpoint:

GET http://<host>/rest/default/V1/orders

Payload:

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searchCriteria[filter_groups][0][filters][0]
[field]=main_table.created_at&searchCriteria
[filter_groups][0][filters][0][value]=2021-09-14%2000:00:00
&searchCriteria[filter_groups][0][filters][0]
[conditionType]=from
&searchCriteria[filter_groups][1][filters][0]
[field]=main_table.created_at
&searchCriteria[filter_groups][1][filters][0]
[value]=2021-09-14%2023:59:59
&searchCriteria[filter_groups][1][filters][0]
[conditionType]=to
&searchCriteria[pageSize]=10
&searchCriteria[currentPage]=86

Extension attribute authentication

Individual fields that are defined as extension attributes can be restricted, based on existing permissions. This feature allows extension developers to restrict access to data. See Web API authentication overview for general information about authentication in Magento.

The following code sample defines stock_item as an extension attribute of the CatalogInventory module. CatalogInventory is treated as a “third-party extension”. Access to the inventory data is restricted because the quantity of in-stock item may be competitive information.

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<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:Api/etc/extension_attributes.xsd">
    <extension_attributes for="Magento\Catalog\Api\Data\ProductInterface">
        <attribute code="stock_item" type="Magento\CatalogInventory\Api\Data\StockItemInterface">
            <resources>
                <resource ref="Magento_CatalogInventory::cataloginventory"/>
            </resources>
        </attribute>
    </extension_attributes>
</config>

In this example, the stock_item attribute is restricted to only the users who have the Magento_CatalogInventory::cataloginventory permission. As a result, an anonymous or unauthenticated user issuing a GET <host>/rest/<store_code>/V1/products/<sku> request will receive product information similar to the following:

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    {
      "sku": "tshirt1",
      "price": "20.00",
      "description": "New JSmith design",
      "extension_attributes": {
        "logo size": "small"
      },
      "custom_attributes": {
        "artist": "James Smith"
      }
    }

However, an authenticated user with the permission Magento_CatalogInventory::cataloginventory receives the additional stock_item field:

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    {
      "sku": "tshirt1",
      "price": "20.00",
      "description": "New JSmith design",
      "extension_attributes": {
        "logo size": "small",
        "stock_item" : {
          "status" : "in_stock"
          "quantity": 70
        }
      },
      "custom_attributes": {
        "artist": "James Smith"
      }
    }

This only works for extension attributes (those attributes defined in an extension_attributes.xml file). There are no permission restrictions on the rest of the returned data. For example, there is no way to restrict custom_attributes.

Extension interfaces

An ExtensionInterface will be empty if no extension attributes have been added. In the following example—in an unmodified installation—CustomerExtensionInterface will be generated, but will be empty:

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use Magento\Framework\Api\ExtensionAttributesInterface;
interface CustomerExtensionInterface extends ExtensionAttributesInterface
{
}

However, if an extension similar to the following has been defined, the interface will not be empty:

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<extension_attributes for="Magento\Customer\Api\Data\CustomerInterface">
    <attribute code="attributeName" type="Magento\Some\Type[]" />
</extension_attributes>

Troubleshoot EAV attributes

If you have issues when using setup:upgrade, verify __construct uses the method EavSetupFactory not EavSetup. You should not directly inject EavSetup in extension code. Check your custom code and purchased modules and extensions to verify. After changing the methods, you should be able to properly deploy.

Add product EAV attribute options reference

The following table is a reference for the Magento\Eav\Setup\EavSetup::addAttribute method. It contains the available options when creating a product attribute, listing each option’s key, description, and the default value (where applicable).