Category and Sub Category order in Catalog API

Questions
1

Hi There

We are using the list catalog API to fetch the categories. Can you assist on understanding how the category and sub category order is represented in the payload.

{
            "type": "CATEGORY",
            "id": "5SSL3NTUS2DJBYNBODJNUAIM",
            "updated_at": "2024-07-10T19:41:04.783Z",
            "created_at": "2024-07-10T19:41:04.783Z",
            "version": 1720640464783,
            "is_deleted": false,
            "present_at_all_locations": true,
            "category_data": {
                "name": "BREAKFAST",
                "category_type": "REGULAR_CATEGORY",
                "parent_category": {
                    "ordinal": -2248982315139072
                },
                "is_top_level": true,
                "online_visibility": false
            }
}

{
            "type": "CATEGORY",
            "id": "N5F22IC4UTKKVTV5UPYQ4JTF",
            "updated_at": "2024-07-22T19:17:25.853Z",
            "created_at": "2024-07-22T19:17:11.97Z",
            "version": 1721675845853,
            "is_deleted": false,
            "present_at_all_locations": true,
            "category_data": {
                "name": "TACOS",
                "category_type": "REGULAR_CATEGORY",
                "parent_category": {
                    "id": "KSZ5BWY2TBH6YIOWUD7UAWXH",
                    "ordinal": -2251662374731776
                },
                "is_top_level": false,
                "online_visibility": false,
                "root_category": "KSZ5BWY2TBH6YIOWUD7UAWXH",
                "ecom_seo_data": {
                    "page_title": "",
                    "page_description": "",
                    "permalink": ""
                }
            }
}

Given above are two objects that represents a top level category (BREAKFAST) and a sub category (TACOS). Our understanding is since TACOS is a sub category, ‘ordinal’ represents it’s order inside the parent category. BREAKFAST is a top level category. Does the ordinal inside the ‘parent_category’ represents its position on the top level categories or is it something else ? Since it is inside a ‘parent_category’ section of a top level category its a little confusing.

Appreciate your help on this.

2

Yes, in this TACOS is a sub category within the BREAKFAST category. :slightly_smiling_face: