If a product is listed in multiple categories, can I track through which category was it added to cart /sold?

Question

In my Magento 2.1.8 installation, I have few special categories like recommended-by-site-owner AND prices-soon-to-increase. I add few products to these categories on my site every week and remove few others.

I need to track in my orders which product was added to cart from each of these categories or was it added outside of these categories.

If a customer adds a product let's say 'iPhone Darth Vader' casing to a single cart from each of these categories and a third addition from outside of these two special categories. I need to track each category's share in the cart item's quantity.

Can anyone suggest a solution a close-to-requirement extension that I can purchase and customize further.

EDIT :

1. I also need to track the category if a customer goes to the product detail page from the category page and then adds the product to cart.

2. I also have a mobile app that is built some another team. I need to provide an API for them as well for this functionality.

Answer 1

Following below steps might be helpful if customer is adding product after landing to the category page:

1. Add a new columnn product_category in sales_order_item table

2. Use registry to find the current category of the product like:

   public function getCurrentCategory() { return $this->_registry->registry('current_category'); }

3.Set this value in checkout session as an array value with product_id as key and category as value foreach of the products which are being added to cart, you can achieve this on observer event checkout_cart_product_add_after

4.After the order is placed, set this session value on the newly created column using foreach, this can be achieved by using observer event checkout_submit_all_after