Duplicate option values -- pretty basic question

[Teeb]

This question seems really basic to me, but I'm just not seeing an answer to it.


So say I have two different areas on my product that can be colored.

When creating values, it makes you pick an option name.


Do you really have to have a Blue in there for everything? When it comes to the point of assigning option values to products, you pick the option name, and then all of the values are there, not just the ones that go with the name.


So could I just enter one Blue, and one Black...


And instead of having to pick Blue [Primary Color] or Blue [Highlight Color] ... I could just have Blue [Colors] And use it for both of those? I have a huge color palette for our roughly 80 vendors, and there will be many many multiples and it's a major hassle to try and keep track of them. If I can eliminate the multiples, that would be huge.

Does that make sense the way I'm asking it... and what's the deal on that? Do I have to have multiple instances of Blue, or can I just get by throwing them under a generic option name like Colors and then using them for all of my option names?

[gjh42]

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You need to have a Blue option value for Primary Color and one for Highlight Color. I have heard that it is planned to change the select box so only values belonging to a selected option name will appear while adding attributes in Attribute Controller.
There is an Improved Attribute Controller mod which may do that already.

[Teeb]

What exactly does it break if you don't do it that way?

The main reason I'd like to get it this way is I'm trying to use a SQL query to insert mass attribute data, and I'm matching names from my data to the products_options_values table to get the value ID.

But with 2 or more Blues in there, I get all of the Blues added to my product. They do seem to work fine even having the wrong ones in there though. Which is why i was kind of wondering if it was going to break something behind the scenes on me or if I could take those duplicates out. If I can't take the duplicates out, it's going to take more work to make my query work.

Can I ask what table relates the values to the names? I wasn't seeing an option id field in the option values table at all.

[gjh42]

It's not that you can choose to do it another way - there is one way for option values to work, which is associated with a particular option name. You can work your queries to eliminate one of the Blues if you want, but then you will have no Blue attribute for one of the colors, Primary Color or Highlight Color.

Have you looked at the Database Schema in the wiki? That describes (most of) the tables and their fields in detail.

[Teeb]

Okee doke.

Thanks for the help. I didn't realize the schema were detailed in the wiki.

I just had to join against the products_options_values_to_products_options table and it cleared it right up.

Dunno how I missed that one the first time around... I guess because the frame in my phpMyAdmin cut off the full name and I misread it as referring to something different, then wrote it off and didn't look back at it once I knew more about the other tables.