Products with same name in different product types

[joshuai96]

Hey,

I am trying to recreate the hierarchy of our systems and running into problems when I want to create a product with the same name in two or more different product types.

Example:

Product type: Foo
Product: Bar

Product type: Baz
Product: Bar

The second one gives an API error product with this name already exists. But this product does not exists in the second product type.

Is it possible to create a product with the same name in two different product types, or is the system not suited to have more then one object with the same name?

[valentijnscholten]

A product name has to unique across the whole Defect Dojo instance.

[joshuai96]

But why?

A product with the same name, could be in multiple product types.

As stated in the docs:
https://docs.defectdojo.com/en/working_with_findings/organizing_engagements_tests/product_hierarchy/

Product types can be anything, like an environment.
It's stated that a product is a unique name. Yes, but that is kinda limiting, isn't it?

Like Product type -> environment -> e.g. Prod, Staging.
A Product might be for example an nginx container.

Being limited to only have one nginx in the whole Defect Dojo instance defeats the purpose of using product types as a kind of organisational structure akin to namespacing.

And as far as I can see, products get an ID, so there is no need for a name to be unique to be used as identification, the ID can be used.
Technically speaking the uniqueness of the name is just an artificial limitation.

[joshuai96]

Our current workaround is to hash the product type and product name, appending the hash to the product name, to have reliable unique names across multiple product types on one instance.

[mtesauro]

@joshuai96 It's been ages since that decision was made, but one thing that makes having a unique constraint across product names is the page that lists them.

Using your example:

Product type: Foo
Product: Bar

Product type: Baz
Product: Bar

If the product listing page (or any drop down of Products, auto-complete of products, ...)

• How do you distinguish "Bar" from "Bar" short or perhaps memorizing the product ID (not shown in drop downs)
• I think that unique constraint is better than having list something like "Foo:Bar" and "Baz:Bar" everywhere you want to list a product's name.

There may have been other considerations when the decision was made but that's one I'm sure was part of the reasoning.

[valentijnscholten]

Our current workaround is to hash the product type and product name, appending the hash to the product name, to have reliable unique names across multiple product types on one instance.

Wouldn't it be easier to just prefix or suffix the product name with the product type (name)?