Display Manufacturer List in admin page

[isyan]

Goody day!

Can you please give me hints on how to display the manufacturer names under the Catalog menu in the admin page?

I know that I should query for the manufacturer's info then echo them in catalog.php but it doesn't seem to work. Am I missing something important?

Thanks and more power!

[pgmarshall]

Can you explain a bit more about what you are trying to achieve?

Thanks,

[isyan]

Basing on the attached image, i would like to display the manufacturers list in the Catalog tab on the backend...

I know I can hard code it but I want to make it dynamic so that everytime I add a new manufacturer it appears automatically there..

thanks

[ridexbuilder]

Why on earth would you want to clutter the Admin. menu with that?
Very weird. (IMO)

[isyan]

actually I wanted to link each manufacturer to an information page where I can put informations regarding the manufacturer..

see attached image

[ridexbuilder]

Hmm, not the same thing then.
I think I see what you're trying to achieve...
How about using the inbuilt Articles feature? Create a Topic called Manufacturers, then an Article for each Manufacturer.
It's then simple to either put a link in the relevant products' description or use the URL field to point (with a relative link) to an appropriate Article.
If you were to name the Article identical to the Manufacturer, then it could be reasonably straightforward to automatically link from a product, with a little bit of code, particularly with SEO links enabled

[isyan]

i tried it but I have some questions..

Can I display the article names in the backend like in my first post?
I just want it to be dynamic... Add a manufacturer, then the manufacturer name would be displayed in a list (in the backend).. and each manufacturer names on that list is connected to an editable page... so that i can connect it to the products page...

Is this possible?

thanks!

[pgmarshall]

isyan,

I am still confused as to why you want to do this!

But in principal you would need to add a new box to the admin ...

Open catalog/admin/includes/column_left.php and add something like

require(DIR_WS_BOXES . 'manufacturers.php');

Then create a new file called manufacturers.php in the catalog/admin/includes/boxes folder.

<!-- manufacturers //-->
          <tr>
            <td>
<?php
  $heading = array();
  $contents = array();

  $heading[] = array('text'  => 'Manufacturers');

$manufacturers_query_raw = "select m.manufacturers_name, mi.manufacturers_url from " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS_INFO . " mi where m.manufacturers_id = mi.manufacturers_id";
$manufacturers_query = tep_db_query($manufacturers_query_raw);
  while ($manufacturers = tep_db_fetch_array($manufacturers_query)) {
  
      $contents[] = array('text' => '<a href="' . $manufacturers['manufacturers_url'] . '" target="_blank">' . $manufacturers['manufacturers_name']) . '</a>');

  }

  $box = new box;
  echo $box->menuBox($heading, $contents);
?>
            </td>
          </tr>
<!-- manufacturers_eof //-->

I have no idea if this will work (the theory is correct) as I have not coded this into a store - I have just made it up here ... it may need debugging a bit ...

It should display a box in the left hand column (which is not hidden) with the names of your manufacturers linked to the URL store in the dbase.

In regard to creating editable pages with text etc. you would need to add this to the manufacturers database table and then edit manufacturers.php to enable you to edit it ...

Regards,