A wildcard can be used with a search term to find items in the external system which contain the term, and not just an exact match. In an example where the wildcard character is ‘%’, and the user wants to find all windscreen wipers, they may enter %Wiper% – this will return ‘Front Wipers’, ‘Rear Wipers’, ‘Wiper blades’ and so on.
Partial searching is a requirement, however the wildcard character itself is optional. Our experience is that not having the wildcard character removes the ability to distinguish between a full and partial search term and can lead to complications in the implementation.
If no items are found, then it is necessary to return a response with a success status only. Do not add an empty item with zero price. Conversely there should be a limit set, to prevent too many items being returned (recommend a maximum of 30 items).