Box in the Middle: Categories

[carab]

Hi,

I would like to offer my wine-shop visitors on the shop-start page all shop categories in the center of the page.

I did not find any documentation or post about how to do it.

If I just try to include It the way its done in the left colum, I get

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare tep_show_category() (previously declared in /home/www/web11/html/shop/includes/boxes/categories.php:13) in /home/www/web11/html/shop/includes/boxes/categories.php on line 13

Important: I also want display all cats like its done at yahoo or any other wb directory, not just the top ones,

Can anybody help?

[carab]

Made a copy of categories.php and called that one.... Now it works. Dirty trick, i know, if anyone knows a better solution, I would prefer that.

Still a problem: How do I show all categories? It only gives me the top-categories?

[jonthewebb]

You'd need to write a custom categories.php to run through all the categories not just the active one. It wouldn't be hard but you'd need to understand php.


jon

[carab]

Yes, I can follow you so far. Since I am a beginner in PHP, I have some problems to analyse the code in categories.php. MAybe you (or someone else) can help a little

As I read it, it has three parts:

1. function tep_show_category($counter) to assamble the output HTML
2.

  $categories_query = tep_db_query("select c.categories_id, cd.categories_name, c.parent_id from " . TABLE_CATEGORIES . " c, " . TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION . " cd where c.parent_id = '0' and c.categories_id = cd.categories_id and cd.language_id='" . (int)$languages_id ."' order by sort_order, cd.categories_name");
  while ($categories = tep_db_fetch_array($categories_query))  {
    $tree[$categories['categories_id']] = array('name' => $categories['categories_name'],
                                                'parent' => $categories['parent_id'],
                                                'level' => 0,
                                                'path' => $categories['categories_id'],
                                                'next_id' => false);

   if (isset($parent_id)) {
      $tree[$parent_id]['next_id'] = $categories['categories_id'];
    }

    $parent_id = $categories['categories_id'];

    if (!isset($first_element)) {
      $first_element = $categories['categories_id'];
    }
  }

To read the top- Categories from teh database

and 3. everything after

if (tep_not_null($cPath)) { ....

to read the subcatagories if cPath is set...

Now I asume , that only 1 cPath can be handed over.... But what is $cPath_array ? Whats it used for?

Is there a variable / array that contains all subcategories allready so that I can work with it?
Or do I have to read them myself from the database?

I would figure it out by echoing, but echo throws an error message in this part of the code:

Warning: Variable passed to reset() is not an array or object in /home/www/web11/html/shop/includes/boxes/categories.php on line 95

Any hint will help....

Thanx carab

[jonthewebb]

$cPath_array is constructed in application_top from the cPath _GET variable, you can see it in the title bar whenever you're looking at categories or products. The cPath_array is made by split() ing the $cPath so for example cPath=1_5_34_54 will be made into an array (1,5,34,54).

You are correct when you say that the cPath_array determines what categories are shown....it runs through until it reaches the end of the array.

Thinking back, I have made a similar modification to what you want, but it only dealt with one sub-level of categories. It was so I could have a dropdown menu for each top level category. I remember it made my head spin trying to understand the category structure of OSC.

Sorry I've not been much help but you are on the right tracks.


jw