[ic] Nested Loops - Newbie

[Jeff Fearn]

> > This generates a unique category for each product/category combination.
> > Which does automate the task, it however does not get passed the messy
> > solution of having multiple categories with the same title. i.e.
>Courses->OS
> > has the same title as Software->OS, the difference is the options used 
>in
> > field/column pairs.
>
>If you are using the new layout_auto.html page just choose complex search.
>Complex Search default values definitely work and will auto create links
>that return categories exclusive to prod_groups regardless of how many
>categories have the same name.

This option only produced a category for the first area a product was in. 
i.e. I have a product in area Courses category OS and another product in 
area Software category OS, only 1 OS category was produced in the design 
page. This was the first  Area/Category and the se/sf values were hard 
coded.

I must not be communicating what I want very well, so I'll try again :}

What I want to do is in the design page have 1 category, say OS, and when I 
apply that category to any area, the links generated should only link to 
products in the area & category. I don not want to generate 1 category per 
area/category combination.Unfortunately the use of "category" here is 
confusing as it is being used in 2 different contexts :{

What I need is to be able to set sf=AREA_SF and se=AREA_SE in the search 
link for the category. That is, I must be able to use variables in the 
search as oppossed to hard coded values that auto_layout generates.

The search needs to be dynamically generated at runtime, not hard coded in 
the design phase. This way you will only ever require 1 category per 
category, regardless of how many areas it is in.

It seems to me that this should be the default behaviour. In fact I can't 
think of a time when you would want to display both area and category and 
have products from other areas displayed. It also seems strange to require 
specific searching on Area/Category for every Area/Category seperately, i.e. 
OS-Courses category to be used when you want to view OS products in courses 
and OS-Software category to search for software bundles etc. If you wanted 
to display products in a cataloge from every area surely you would simply 
not put an se/sf pair in the area search.
I am sure this needs to be done in code, and the most likely area I have 
found is accessing the box loop se/sf pair in the cat loop search in 
category_vertical.

I have a two step process using the auto-populate feature that should make 
it simple enough for the sales staff to add new areas. However I still 
believe the approach taken is overly complex. if (AREA_SE != NULL) 
add_se($searchm AREA_SE) etc . There you go, one category per category, if 
you don't want to display a category by area, don't have an area search, 
even sales staff can handle that :}

Jeff.

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