Display only selected products in the second language of the site

[honatto]

Greetings,

I use Zen Cart partly as a news platform. Any news is submitted through the catalog as categories/product. Then the front lists all the "products" in order to show the news.

The problem: I have two languages - Bulgarian and English. My native users are interested in EVERYTHING submitted. The foreigners should only read selected (major) news, the minor ones just push these below.

I was thinking of messing with the code. But I can't really get into the essence of the way news is displayed. Simply put - I wanted to do a DB check if the news is translated (second textarea contains anything) and if so only then display. Else don't, because currently it displays the picture and text/heading are empty.

This is really important to my work and If someone is really interested in helping me, I can provide you with details.

Thanks in advance!

[twitchtoo]

You can accomplish this in a few ways:

Option #1 - Language Groups
Use the Twitch Wholesale Attributes with Product Control Switch and point the entire product filter system at a prefilter for languages which gives you:

Custom Coded
- language groups
- news filter

Out of the Box
- product, wholesale, retail and guest groups
- retains group pricing if you're using it

These 'groups' wholesale for example could be a 'language group'. English = Retail Group, Bulgarian = Wholesale Group. You can then get really fancy with the news filter for these groups at the product level with the control switch - On/Off/Both groups.


Option #2 - Secure News Data
The same is possible with Twitch Restrict if you want to also restrict any public access to the data - data is filtered on the server behind closed doors before it is released to the HTML/PHP running the live site.

There's also no limit on the 'Twitch' groups you could setup so it's already scalable :)


Option #3 - Fast and Easy
A third and exceptionally simple method is to add a language filter tied to a simple true/false gate for the news data before it is displayed on the site. This wouldn't be 'secure' in that the data would already make it to the output HTML/PHP. Visually it would look the part functionally other countries may find an interest in your news ;)

[honatto]

Thanks for the response, I actually took the easy path myself.

Edit: includes/index_filters/default_filter.php
Add the following code to all listing queues

                 and pd.products_name != ''
		 and pd.products_description IS NOT NULL
		 and pd.products_description != ''

The logic behind it: English user enters the website, only articles with value in name and description get shown.

Downsides:
1. It affects both languages, but the main language uses name / description.
2. Articles can still be accessed through direct link and they will remain untranslated. - which can be fixed by putting "Not available in English." in the description and then adding this exception to the query above.
3. I have "top articles" as in Top 1 and Top 2/3 and articles appear regardless of the query above => either more editting or just translate them always.
4. Simple and practicle, but not sure if it can't brake anything. Testing it currently.


- Feel free to suggest ideas or mention more possible outcomes I didn't take in account.

[honatto]

I can't edit the post above, but simply

and pd.products_name != ''

is enough for my cause. I do sometimes put a title and type "expect more information soon".

[Design75]

I think it is simpler to use the session language.

like:

AND pd.languages_id = " . $_SESSION['languages_id'] . " 

and not use the above from your post