Migrating CIF PLP Queries to Catalog Service – How to Intercept/Customize ProductList Implementation

[olsalas711]

Hello Community,

We are in the process of migrating from a traditional AEM storefront implementation with CIF components to Catalog Service, and we are facing challenges with Product Listing Pages (PLP).

Currently, our PLPs use queries like:

query {
  products(filter: { sku: { in: ["8429420181151", "8718117612253", "8470001995292", ...] }}) {
    items {
      __typename
      sku
      price_range {
        minimum_price {
          regular_price { value currency }
          final_price { value currency }
        }
      }
      ...
    }
  }
}

But we need to switch to Catalog Service with productSearch, for example:

query ProductSearchPLP_WithPrices(
  $phrase: String!,
  $current_page: Int = 1,
  $page_size: Int = 1,
  $filter: [SearchClauseInput!],
  $sort: [ProductSearchSortInput!],
  $context: QueryContextInput
) {
  productSearch(
    phrase: $phrase,
    current_page: $current_page,
    page_size: $page_size,
    filter: $filter,
    sort: $sort,
    context: $context
  ) {
    total_count
    items {
      product {
        sku
        name
        price_range {
          minimum_price { final_price { value currency } regular_price { value currency } }
          maximum_price { final_price { value currency } regular_price { value currency } }
        }
      }
      productView {
        id sku name url description
        images { url label roles }
        attributes { name value }
      }
    }
  }
}

The issue is that our catalog is very large, so performance and scalability are critical.

When reviewing the archetype of the current implementation for ProductList, we see something like this:

@Override
public Collection<ProductListItem> getProducts() {
    List<ProductListItem> products = new ArrayList<>(productList.getProducts());
    products.sort((a, b) -> {
        String aStock = getStockStatusFromProduct(a);
        String bStock = getStockStatusFromProduct(b);
        boolean aAvailable = "IN_STOCK".equalsIgnoreCase(aStock);
        boolean bAvailable = "IN_STOCK".equalsIgnoreCase(bStock);

        if (aAvailable == bAvailable) return 0;
        return aAvailable ? -1 : 1; // In-stock products first
    });
    return products;
}

My questions are:

What is the recommended way to intercept or replace the query executed by CIF components (e.g., ProductListImpl) so that we can move from products(filter: { sku: { in: [...] }}) to productSearch in Catalog Service?

Is creating a custom ProductCollection implementation the right approach, or are there best practices/extensions already defined for this migration?

Any guidance, examples, or pointers to documentation on how/where to customize the query in the CIF component flow would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!