Creating Categories and Products in a Hierarchy

There are some important considerations to keep in mind when you send data to Tulip for Products and Parent Categories using the Bulk API.

Tulip cannot mix products and categories at the same hierarchy level and display them.

An incorrect relationship would be: Product 1 and Category 2 are children of Category 1.

Tulip only displays products at the leaf level within a category tree branch.
You may send any number of category → subcategory levels in a hierarchy and respective branches. However, products in each subcategory branch must only exist at the lowest leaf level.

Example: A simple product to parent category

A correct relationship: Product 1 and 2 are are childs of Category 1.

Example: You can have many branches, and each branch can include a variety of depths. But ensure that there are products at the leaf level.

A correct relationship: Category 1 has a child Category 2. Category 2 has two childs, Category 3 and 4. Product 3 is a child of Category 3. Product 1 and 2 are childs of Category 4.

Correct and incorrect category-product leaf structure

An example of a correct and incorrect use of the category-product leaf structure

What happens if there are no products at a specific leaf level?
If there are no products at a specific leaf level, that category branch is not displayed. In the previous example, if Product 3 was not present, then Category 3 would not be displayed. If products are missing in a category branch, then only the topmost category that has child products (such as Category 2 above) or the root level category displays.