Add Custom Attributes
Beta release
This is pre-release documentation for an API in public beta and is subject to change.
Custom attributes let you associate additional information to ITEM
and ITEM_VARIATION
type catalog objects. Suppose a quick service restaurant hires an order-ahead manager. The order-ahead partner needs additional information for each menu item. For example,
A partner-specific menu item name, such as "Chicken" instead of the original item name of "CHK".
A partner-specific price.
Allergen information.
You can add a custom attribute to any CatalogItem object in the restaurant catalog so the seller can add those additional details.
Seller-visible custom attributes appear within the Item Library and Service Library in the Seller Dashboard, allowing sellers to leverage Square as a one-stop shop for managing their information.
Each application linked to a seller account can create up to 10 seller-visible custom attribute definitions defined by a CatalogCustomAttributeDefinition object. Custom attribute definitions appear in the Item Edit sheet in the Seller Dashboard, where sellers can see and edit the custom attribute values.
Note
Custom attributes do not currently appear in the Square Point of Sale application.
Assigning a custom attribute definition to an item or variation means that it appears on every object of that type within the seller catalog. For example, if a seller has a custom attribute to represent pizza toppings, every item in that seller's catalog (including sodas) has the toppings attribute.
You can control the visibility of a custom attribute by setting the CatalogCustomAttributeDefinition app_visibility and seller_visibility fields.
Note that the application that created a custom attribute definition always has the ability to retrieve, search, and update the values of any custom attribute that uses that definition.
The app_visibility
field controls whether the custom attribute is readable or writable by other applications:
APP_VISIBILITY_READ_ONLY
. Visible and searchable by other applications.APP_VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES
. Other applications can read and write custom attribute values on objects.APP_VISIBILITY_HIDDEN
. Other applications cannot seeAPP_VISIBILITY_HIDDEN
custom attribute definitions or the associated values.
The seller_visibility
field controls whether the custom attribute appears in the UI of Square products, such as the Square Point of Sale application or the Seller Dashboard:
SELLER_VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES
. Sellers can search and edit the custom attribute. For example, an application can define a custom attribute definition and setseller_visibility
toSELLER_VISIBILITY_READ_WRITE_VALUES
. This way, sellers are able to write values of the custom attribute and read them from the Seller Dashboard. Sellers can also search for this custom attribute, which might be useful for storing data for which the seller is intended to be the source of truth.SELLER_VISIBILITY_HIDDEN
. Sellers cannot see custom attribute definitions or the associated values.
A SELECTION
type custom attribute has multiple possible values defined by the developer in the CatalogCustomAttributeDefinitionSelectionConfig object. SELECTION
type attributes can also allow single or multiple value selections.
Limitations include:
Each
CatalogCustomAttributeDefinition
object of theSELECTION
type can define up to 100 allowed selection values.Each item or item variation can have up to 100 active selection values.
A STRING
type custom attribute can take any free-form string value of up to 255 characters. The string value can include any Unicode code point. Empty strings are also allowed.
Each custom attribute with the NUMBER
type can store values with up to 5 decimal places and can support values up to approximately 90 trillion (exact value 263/100,000).
A true
or false
value. For example, BOOLEAN
type custom attributes can be used to set whether an item is available for delivery in a third-party delivery application.
To use custom attributes, you need to:
Create a
CatalogObject
of theCUSTOM_ATTRIBUTE_DEFINITION
type. This determines the type of custom attribute and the visibility.Add the custom attribute to a catalog item.
In the following example, a custom attribute definition is created for a custom field to track what brand of cocoa is used for a Hot Cocoa item. This custom attribute takes STRING
values. You specify a key that you can use to identify this custom attribute definition in the next step.
Important
You need to specify the allowed_object_types
for your new custom attribute definitions to be displayed in the Seller Dashboard.
Important
In the previous example, the custom_attribute_values
field includes "custom_attribute_definition_id": "#cocoa_brand"
. When you are creating a batch-upsert
request, be sure to include this field when you use the custom_attribute_values
field.
To delete a custom attribute from the catalog, call the DeleteCatalogObject endpoint while supplying the custom attribute ID as the object_id
path parameter value. In the following example, the custom attribute object ID is assumed to be VEER7NOZJRW75LXVVVS4BX25
:
Each seller can have up to 10 seller-visible and 10 non-seller-visible custom attributes.
You cannot edit the type of a custom attribute after creation.
You cannot edit the configuration for
STRING
type attributes after creation.You must use Square Version “
2020-03-25
” to work with custom attributes in beta.
If you need more assistance, contact Developer Support or ask for help in the Developer Forums.