[mv] Dynamic Generation of Clickbars: Solution

[Chris Rapier <rapier@psc.edu>]

******    message to minivend-users from Chris Rapier <rapier@psc.edu>     ******

So I solved my own question :)

The following nugget of code will allow you to generate a clickbar based
on the contents of a database field. The database I'm using for this is
catopts and has the following format:

catname title   title_image     subcats
Baby_Food       Baby Food       dummytitle.jpg 
Cereals,Jars,Juice,Snacks
Baking_Supplies Baking Supplies dummytitle.jpg	Flour,Mixes
...

If the value sucked out of mv_searchspec doesn't match a row's name (the
key) then it sets things to a default and skips the perl bit. This
allows me to use the same results page for user searches as well as
searches I've defined. 

I'm convinced that this is *not* the best way to do this. My feeling is
that there is a much cleaner way of handling it but I can't think of one
at the moment. If anyone has any improvements please let me know. 

[comment] 
cjr: june 27,2000
generates clickbars based on subcategory names existing in a database 
field
assumption: 1st entry in mv_searchspec array is the major category 
field value if it doesn't correspond to a major category field value 
then its a user defined search spanning multiple categories
subcat_clickbar: html code for the click bar
  note: subcategory names have to correspond to the image file names.
category_name: The 1st entry in mv_searchspec
category_title: The title of the category based on table lookup
titleimage: The image used for the page header
usage: embed in begining of page. use [scratch subcat_clickbar] to
display the resultant html.
[/comment]

[perl] 
$Scratch->{'category_name'} = $Values->{'mv_searchspec'}[0]; 
return ""; 
[/perl] 
[seti category_title][data base="catopts" field ="title" key="[scratch
category_name]"][/seti] 
[if !scratch category_title] 
  [set category_title]Your Search[/set] 
  [set titleimage]yrsearchtitle.jpg[/set] 
  [set perlflag]1[/set] 
 [else] 
  [seti titleimage][data base="catopts" field ="title_image"
key="[scratch category_name]"][/seti] 
  [perl catopts] 
   $Scratch->{'subcat_clickbar'} = ""; 
   my $ref = $Db{'catopts'}; 
   my $vendurl = $Config->{'VendURL'}; 
   my $colname="subcats"; 
   my $build_html = ""; 
   my $rowname= $Values->{'mv_searchspec'}[0]; 
   my $searches = $ref->field($rowname, $colname); 
   my @subcats = split /\,/, $searches; 
   foreach (@subcats) { 
     $Scratch->{'subcat_clickbar'} .= "<a
href=\"$vendurl/scan/sf=category,subcat,category2,subcat2/se=$rowname/se=$_/os=no/ml=5.htm\
l/tf=description,brand\"><img src =
\"/windfallfoods/images/$_.gif\"></a>\n"; 
   } 
   return ""; 
  [/perl] 
 [/else] 
[/if]
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