List Products by Attribute?

[djc8000]

Hi

I am about to make a site for a company selling designer bags/accessories etc

Basically they have 21 set 'styles' of products, e.g. a pencil case or a traditional wash bag or a shopping bag. Every season they introduce new fabrics. You can then buy any style in any fabric (depending on stock). So I could buy the pencil case in the 'Patchwork' fabric. The fabrics come and go but the styles 'generally' stay the same although occasionally some new ones are added. These products aren't made to order so sometimes a style will not be available in a certain fabric.

Their current site (non zen cart) allows them to add the style as a product and then add all the different fabrics as different versions within that product which are shown as pictures. This is fine but they would also like to display a list of their available fabrics which would then link through to the products available in that fabric.

So would it be possible (in v1.3.5) to link the style with the fabric, bearing in mind that the fabric list is not the same for every style (due to stock issues)? Could their be two ways of accessing the product:

Choose style -> choose fabric -> buy
Choose fabric -> choose style -> buy

Its also important to note that both aspects, style and fabric, are very visual and it would be best if they could be shown with images. I say this because I have already tried adding 'Fabric' as an attribute but it lists the fabric names in a dropdown which doesnt show the user the actual design of the fabric.

Would I have to add every style as a product and add the fabrics as attributes and then add every fabric as a product and add the style as an attribute (using the stock by attributes module? It seems a bit long winded.

This is going to get potentially more complex as fabrics are organised as 'This season', 'Last season', 'Classics'.

It must be easy to update and easy to understand for both the client and the user.

Its hurting my head at the moment!

[swguy]

...
Its also important to note that both aspects, style and fabric, are very visual and it would be best if they could be shown with images. I say this because I have already tried adding 'Fabric' as an attribute but it lists the fabric names in a dropdown which doesnt show the user the actual design of the fabric.

Try the attributes image swatch on the attributes controller.

Good luck,
Scott

[djc8000]

Thanks Scott, will give that a go later

[djc8000]

Try the attributes image swatch on the attributes controller.

Good luck,
Scott

Excellent, that works great for the images. Thanks again Scott.

How about categorising by Fabric and by Style? Is this possible without creating two lots of products?

[swguy]

You could add some custom logic that would, for a specified option name or value search for all products using that option name or value (depending on how you've organized your data).

Scott