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Product Service 📦

The Product Service manages the product catalog, categories, pricing, and inventory in the ShopVerse platform.
It acts as the central source of truth for product-related data and supports both public product browsing and admin product management.

🎯 Responsibilities​

The Product Service is responsible for:

  • Product and category management
  • Pricing and inventory tracking
  • SKU generation
  • Soft deletion of products
  • Publishing product lifecycle events
  • Serving product data to Order Service

🧠 Why a Separate Product Service?​

In an e-commerce system, product data is:

  • Read-heavy
  • Frequently queried
  • Business-critical

Separating it into its own service enables:

  • Independent scaling
  • Clear ownership of catalog logic
  • Safe inventory management
  • Isolation from order and payment workflows

🏗️ High-Level Architecture​

🔐 Security Model​

  • All requests pass through API Gateway

  • Gateway injects:

    • X-User-Email
    • X-User-Role

  • Public APIs are accessible without authentication

  • Admin APIs are protected using RBAC

No JWT parsing is done inside Product Service.

📦 Product Lifecycle Flow​

🗄️ Data Model​

Product Entity​

  • id
  • name
  • description
  • price
  • stock
  • sku
  • brand
  • categoryId
  • isActive (soft delete)
  • version (optimistic locking)
  • createdAt
  • updatedAt

Category Entity​

  • id
  • name
  • description
  • isActive

🧩 Soft Delete Strategy​

Products are never physically deleted.

  • isActive = false → product hidden
  • Queries automatically filter inactive records
  • Prevents data loss
  • Maintains order history integrity

📡 Kafka Events Published​

Event TypeTopicDescription
PRODUCT_CREATEDproduct-eventsNew product added
PRODUCT_UPDATEDproduct-eventsProduct updated
PRODUCT_DELETEDproduct-eventsProduct deactivated
PRODUCT_STOCK_UPDATEDproduct-eventsInventory change

Consumers:

  • Notification Service
  • Analytics Service
  • Recommendation Service

🌐 Public APIs (Client Access)​

MethodEndpointDescription
GET/api/productsList active products
GET/api/products/{id}Get product by ID
GET/api/categoriesList categories

These endpoints are publicly accessible.

🛠️ Admin APIs​

MethodEndpointRoleDescription
POST/api/productsADMINCreate product
PUT/api/products/{id}ADMINUpdate product
DELETE/api/products/{id}ADMINSoft delete product
POST/api/products/bulkADMINBulk product creation

📈 Inventory Management​

  • Stock updates are transactional
  • Order Service validates stock before placing orders
  • Stock is reduced only after order confirmation
  • Optimistic locking prevents race conditions

⚠️ Failure Scenarios​

❌ Product Not Found​

  • Returns 404 Not Found

❌ Insufficient Stock​

  • Order Service rejects order
  • Product stock remains unchanged

❌ Concurrent Updates​

  • Optimistic lock exception
  • Client retry required

⚙️ Key Components​

  • ProductController – Product APIs
  • CategoryController – Category APIs
  • ProductService – Business logic
  • CategoryService – Category logic
  • ProductRepository – JPA repository
  • KafkaEventPublisher – Event publishing
  • GlobalExceptionHandler – Standard error responses

📈 Scalability Considerations​

  • Read-heavy APIs can be cached
  • Stateless service → horizontal scaling
  • Database indexed on SKU & category
  • Kafka decouples downstream consumers

🧪 Testing Strategy​

  • Unit tests for product logic
  • Integration tests for inventory checks
  • Negative tests for unauthorized access
  • Concurrency tests for stock updates

📌 Summary​

The Product Service provides:

  • Reliable product catalog management
  • Secure admin-only mutations
  • Event-driven extensibility
  • Inventory consistency guarantees

It is a core domain service that directly impacts user experience and order processing.