Product Type Question

[imagineeratheart]

Okay I've been poking around Zen Cart for a while and I'm still kind of new at this. I have an idea to create a couple product types and I have had a thought that could help me combine them into one product type. I just don't know if this will work. To explain my idea I'm going to use the music product type. When entering a new music product in the admin area and I leave the selection to none on music genre, record company, or record artist, is it possible on the product display page to only display any of these only when a value other than none is entered? or does it already have this capability?

[mc12345678]

This is something that could be controlled on the applicable template file. There is a small amount of existing control to show fields all the time or not, you would want to add your data check at the same point that that check is performed if the display is true and there is data (zen_not_null($mydata)) then display that field.

See: includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/templates/tpl_product_music_info.php for starters. If not already in that folder, then copy the file of the same name from includes/templates/template_default/templates before editing.

[imagineeratheart]

Okay so I played with the music product type and I did notice that when the field for Record Artist, Record Company, and Music Genre fields are left to none that it doesn't show up on the product display page. Unfortunately I have never fully learned to program in PHP and I'm not sure what the code looks like so I can apply this to other fields that I want to add. Maybe someone could tell me which file to look at and post the code that actually does it. I'd really appreciate it.

[mc12345678]

So, seeing as the fields originally identified seem to operate as desired and the level of knowledge identified, the changes needed to add additional fields without the use of a plugin such as numinix additional fields are many.

Such files include but are not limited to the collect, preview, and update files for the admin product type, then the header_php.php, main_variables of the pages folder and associated template file for the product type all on the store side.