Categories with Zero Products

[rstevenson]

Since you're already using Easy Populate, and presumably create and maintain your base data in Excel or a similar program, you could automate the process somewhat by using Visual Basic within Excel. But of course, this would mean you'd always be deleting and creating categories as needed rather than just turning them off and on, and I'm not sure EP can delete categories during uploads -- create yes, but maybe not delete.

Rob

[afo]

I believe the question being asked is different from the original question. Zero products is a different situation than products with zero stock. The category still has products in that case. I don't think there's a way to automate that unless it might involve a very complex SQL statement... maybe..

[rstevenson]

Good point Mary Ellen. I missed that distinction entirely.

But they might want to look into this coincidental thread.

Rob

[bodyjewelrystores]

I believe the question being asked is different from the original question. Zero products is a different situation than products with zero stock. The category still has products in that case. I don't think there's a way to automate that unless it might involve a very complex SQL statement... maybe..

I'm thinking something along the lines of the product count in the category sidebox (when zero-stock products are hidden).... that one makes no distinction between active products and total products. For any category with products, the customer would see "0" as long as they're all zero-stock and/or with a status of 0. So, since there's already a routine in Zen Cart that works like that, maybe I could use the same principle in letting it set the category's status accordingly...

[afo]

I'm thinking something along the lines of the product count in the category sidebox (when zero-stock products are hidden).... that one makes no distinction between active products and total products. For any category with products, the customer would see "0" as long as they're all zero-stock and/or with a status of 0. So, since there's already a routine in Zen Cart that works like that, maybe I could use the same principle in letting it set the category's status accordingly...

There might be. When I read this thread earlier today (long before I posted), I poked around in the admin to see if there was a setting. I doubt the existing setting puts that fine a point on it, but I suppose someone far more experienced with the behind the scenes workings of ZC could write a mod to do this. Could be something for the devs to consider for future releases.

[afo]

It occurred to me that a better term for this situation would be a category with inactive products instead of zero products. It better describes the current topic of the thread.

[bodyjewelrystores]

Since you're already using Easy Populate, and presumably create and maintain your base data in Excel or a similar program, you could automate the process somewhat by using Visual Basic within Excel. But of course, this would mean you'd always be deleting and creating categories as needed rather than just turning them off and on, and I'm not sure EP can delete categories during uploads -- create yes, but maybe not delete.

Rob

Well, I'm not really maintaining the whole thing with excel/easy populate - I just use it when adding new products and changing stock status. There are a lot of things EP doesn't do, or doesn't do well (most annoyingly - sort orders, and item attributes, but also category management as you noted above), and sometimes I can complete the picture with some SQL queries, but for this I'd need something more dynamic.

However, your post got me thinking.... maybe there's a way to add a little routine to Easy Populate's php scripts, which would run after an EP file has been uploaded, loop through all the categories, count the active items, and change the category status accordingly. Could be a nasty bit of code-crunching (for me) but might work....