Data element types in edge extensions

In tags, data elements are aliases for pieces of data on a web or mobile page, regardless of where that data is found inside the event received by the server. A data element can be referenced by rules and acts as an abstraction for accessing these pieces of data. When the location of the data changes in the future (such as changing the event key that contains the value), a single data element can be reconfigured while all the rules referencing that data element can remain unchanged.

Data element types are provided by extensions, and the extension author determines how this piece of data is retrieved. For example, you can use a data element type to allow Adobe Experience Platform users to retrieve a piece of data from the XDM layer or their custom data layer.

This document covers how to define data element types for an edge extension in Adobe Experience Platform.

Data element types typically consist of the following:

Should you want to allow users to retrieve a piece of data from the custom data layer, your module may look like this example.

module.exports = (context) => {
  const productName = context.arc.event.data.productName;
  return productName;
};

If you want to make the data returned for the data layer configurable by the Adobe Experience Platform user, you can allow the user to input a key name and then save the name to the settings object. The object might look something like this.

{
  keyName: "campaignId"
}

In order to operate on the user-defined local storage item name, your module would need to change to this:

module.exports = (context) => {
  const data = context.arc.event.data;
  return data[keyName];
};

Library module context

All data element modules have access to a context variable that is provided when the module is called. You can learn more here.