Simple Category Tree

I checked on a site with less that 10 cats, this one use 30 queries less than the built it. That's understandable. The built in is expected to gain great improvement on v1.4.

quentinjs:

Very handy class! And great support. Have you ever checked to see if there is any performance over your category vs the built in?

I have just installed your mod category tree and I am trying to work out how I can use the following function to display my products.

retrieve_deepest_cats_array($categories_id)

Ive been looking at index header_php and the main_template_vars.php pages to try and display products using this function when the category is nested rather than show categories.

I am having no luck so far and I suspect its out of my depth. Am I either on the right track?

At least I know it is possible somehow :clap:

You are on the right track.

Still not having any luck with displaying all the sub-cat products - I'm seriously out of my depth. :huh:

Any chance you will be releasing the code to do this?

I will soon ^^. Too busy.

Yellow1912 - very excited to see this. Unfortunately I'm also out of my depths, and will be looking forward to seeing any updates that you post.

FYI to those using other category tree mods, this might not be a simple installation - I've been reviewing my own files (I'm running Better Categories mod), I suspect it would take some additional knowledge on my part to integrate this solution. sigh

Having looked at the mod files, it appears that it will require a completely different approach to getting effects like BetterCategories or Categories Dressing allow. The tpl_categories substitute does nothing but output the content built in the class, so modification (other than what CSS can do) would have to be done at the class or function level.

I'm interested in working on this, but it will be a while before there may be any results to share. I also don't want to spend a lot of time on this only to have it rendered obsolete soon by v1.4. (I expect the current Categories Dressing to require major reworking for v1.4 anyway.)

That's why the class has a function to return the whole tree as an array, which you can do whatever you want with it. You can also have part of the array returned to you as well. And then in your template file, process the array and make it appear just the way you want it to^^.

gjh42:

I'm interested in working on this, but it will be a while before there may be any results to share. I also don't want to spend a lot of time on this only to have it rendered obsolete soon by v1.4. (I expect the current Categories Dressing to require major reworking for v1.4 anyway.)

Glenn, I'd be interested in seeing what you manage to do if you decide to spend the time on it. I understand your concerns on 1.4, but I suspect there are a lot of shop folk out there who would still appreciate these efforts on 1.3

Thanks, I'll take a look at the setup of that array and try massaging its contents.

Something like this: (all the categories will be listed in category_tree array, each category will have the elements as shown)**

category_tree** (array) - 22 (array)- name (string) => test

• parent_id (string) => 0
• path (array)- 0 (string) => 22
• sub_cats (array)- 0 (string) => 23
• 1 (string) => 24
• sub (string) => has_sub
• cPath (string) => 22
• deepest_cats (array)- 0 (string) => 23
• 1 (string) => 26
• 2 (string) => 27
• 0 (array)- sub_cats (array)- 0 (string) => 22
• 1 (string) => 8
• 2 (string) => 6
• 3 (string) => 21
• 4 (string) => 11
• 5 (string) => 9
• 6 (string) => 10
• 7 (string) => 16
• 8 (string) => 17
• 9 (string) => 18
• 10 (string) => 15

Thanks for the listing, that will make it quicker to start working with it.

Hello there,

This may be a stupid question, so bear with me if it is. I have CSS dropdown category dropdown installed, is it possible to integrate this method with the simple category tree? I was interested in the part on reducing load time on the server, as I have loads of categories.

Thanks in advance,

Heathenmagic :smile:

I believe that mod already does a pretty good job reducing the load. You may want to check that module's code and see how it queries the database.

Hmm... I've been trying with the retrieve_deepest_cats_array($categories_id) function but still no luck. Anyone made any progress?

No luck here

I'll upload a package here around, lets say, within 1 or 1 and a half week. If you cant wait, feel free to work on it though.

Regards.

Thanks heaps! I'll be working on it but chances are I won't crack it... Will be looking forward to the upload as it is the final touch on my Zen Cart store!

yellow1912:

I'll upload a package here around, lets say, within 1 or 1 and a half week. If you cant wait, feel free to work on it though.

Regards.

Ok this is crazy... I completely screwed up my shop the other night by deleting a few files I hadn't backed up then uploaded what I had but that crashed my shop, so I started over (thankfully I am still building the shop so it is not live). However, I have been mucking around with a few files n making slight changes, and somehow I have managed to succeed with what we have all been stuggling to accomplish!

I HAVE PRODUCTS FROM SUBCATEGORIES SHOWING UP IN MY PARENT CATEGORIES!!!!! WOOOHOOOOO!!! :clap:

Anyway, when I get to the bottom of the subcategories (eg the category that holds the products), there is a double up so I just need to find the function that shows the products and see if I can delete just one of them.

Any tips are helpful but I will post back here once I compare my file backups and see what exactly I did that made this fortunate accident!!! I have pretty much no clue with Zen language or any other coding (apart from HTML and grasping css now) so I have no idea how this managed to work!

Will post as soon as I know what it is!