[ic] FYI: Product Search by Alphabet

[Greg Heath]

Hi all,
In the search of the archives I never found a suitable solution for creating
a index for my catalogues. The task was to replicate an index as in a
printed catalogue.

This creates a link bar on top like this: A | B | C | D | E | F etc etc...
but with pretty pictures. eg "images_menu/tab_a.gif"

products_index.txt is a table of with columns code & title where title
contains the text to search for in the products.txt column called index
eg the product_index.txt file
code    title
1    Machines - Overhead Projectors
2    OHP & Supplies - OHP
3    OHP & Supplies - Overhead Projector

The column index can contain a list of possible ways to look up a product
eg the product.txt file
title:"3M 2000 Overhead Projector"
index:"Machines - Overhead Projectors / OHP & Supplies - OHP / OHP &
Supplies - Overhead Projector"

of course this is probably only one of many solutions and I found it
suitable to my sites, with modifications it can be used to extract a
category list from the product.txt file.

--------------- start
file="templates/components/alpha_menu" -------------------
[perl]
  $menu = " ";
  $letter = " ";

  for ($i = 65; $i < 88 ; $i++){
    $letter = chr($i);
    $menu .= "[page scan fi=products_index\.txt
       co=yes
       se=$letter\%
       op=LIKE
       sf=title
       tf=title
       to=f
       sp=@@MV_PAGE@@
       ml=999]<img
       src=\"images_menu/tab_\l$letter.gif\"
       alt=\"$letter\"
       border=\"0\"
       width=\"20\"
       height=\"20\">";
  }
  $menu .= "[page scan fi=products_index\.txt
       co=yes
       se=X\%
       op=ge
       sf=title
       tf=title
       to=f
       sp=@@MV_PAGE@@
       ml=999]<img
      src=\"images_menu/tab_xyz.gif\"
      alt=\"XYZ\"
      border=\"0\"
      height=\"20\">";
   return $menu;
[/perl]

--------------- end
file="templates/components/alpha_menu" -------------------


--------------- start  index results page -------------------

<!-- BEGIN CONTENT -->
<h1>Product Index</h1>
<h3>[include file="templates/components/alpha_menu"]</h3>
[search-region]
  [no-match]
      <BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE>
      Sorry, no matches for <B>[value-extended name=mv_searchspec joiner=" |
"]</B>.
      [if value mv_search_error]
        <P><B>Errors:
        <BR> [value-extended name=mv_search_error joiner="<BR>"]
        </B>
      [/if]
      <BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE>
  [/no-match]
  <BR CLEAR=LEFT>
  [more-list]
      <BLOCKQUOTE>
        [more]<BR>
      </BLOCKQUOTE>
  [/more-list]
  <ul>
  [search-list]
      [on-change header][condition][item-data product_index
title][/condition]
      <li><FONT FACE="verdana,arial,helvetica">
          <A HREF="[area href=scan
                     arg=|
                        sf=index
                        em=1
                        ac=1
                        se=[item-data product_index title]
                        tf=title
                        to=f
                        ml=10
                       |
                  ]">[filter name namecase][item-data product_index
title][/filter]</A>
          </font></li>
      [/on-change header]
  [/search-list]
  </ul>
[/search-region]
<P ALIGN=CENTER>

<!-- current page: @@MV_PAGE@@ -->
<!-- END CONTENT -->

--------------- end index results page -------------------

Regards
Greg Heath
Pacific Tecnologies International P/L
www.pacifictech.com.au
greg@pacifictech.com.au