[jaybee]

Nested Manufacturers

I have a suggestion to enable manufacturers to be hierarchical, providing the option of an additional level.

This would be especially useful for a unisex clothing store, where it may be desirable to offer separation of clothing brands for front-end organisation.

Example:

Men
↳ Addict
↳ Carhartt
↳ Stussy

Women
↳ G-Star
↳ Paul's Boutique
↳ Shikha

[EHLOVader]

jaybee, on 10 January 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

Nested Manufacturers

I have a suggestion to enable manufacturers to be hierarchical, providing the option of an additional level.

This would be especially useful for a unisex clothing store, where it may be desirable to offer separation of clothing brands for front-end organisation.

Example:

Men
↳ Addict
↳ Carhartt
↳ Stussy

Women
↳ G-Star
↳ Paul's Boutique
↳ Shikha

This sounds somewhat like a feature you can extrapolate from the categories and your data. Men and women aren't really a manufacturer (although if you find a good one for either, let me know) so it doesn't seem fitting.

What I would do is structure the products into cats, such as men's and women's, then the respective child cats if you want. Assign your mfgs to the products within... then when you have filtered down to the category you want, you should be able to easily grab what mfgs exist within that classification.

I don't think I can come up with a scenario in which a mfg uses another mfg, and you would want the world to know it.

[jaybee]

I guess what I meant was, it would be useful to have the option to group manufacturers.

Quote

EHLOVader: What I would do is structure the products into cats, such as men's and women's, then the respective child cats if you want. Assign your mfgs to the products within... then when you have filtered down to the category you want, you should be able to easily grab what mfgs exist within that classification.

Good point, I can see your logic here.

[activeholdingco]

You could easily extend the manufacturers to add a Group field. Then you could fetch a list of manufacturers that are part of that group.

[jaybee]

activeholdingco, on 26 January 2012 - 09:08 AM, said:

You could easily extend the manufacturers to add a Group field. Then you could fetch a list of manufacturers that are part of that group.

Hey, sounds cool – although I've not tinkered with that kind of stuff. Does this mean changing core files, where would I start?

[EHLOVader]

jaybee, on 27 January 2012 - 02:18 AM, said:

Hey, sounds cool – although I've not tinkered with that kind of stuff. Does this mean changing core files, where would I start?

It shouldn't require any core modifications. First read through these docs. They will be helpful:

Developing Modules
Developing a simple module
Extending existing models
Extend manufacturer model
Extend Manufacturer Form
Shop_Manufacturer Class

You will want to make a module that extends the manufacturers model with a field for storing the group.

To flesh this out into something more maintainable you might even considering creating a table for storing the group, and using a table relation to bind the manufacturers together.

I have been converted, I now know of at least one case where a grouping of mfgs would help. Although I would have to go a step further and provide Brands, product lines, and a few other specialty classifications which can help provide a hierarchical structure to the manufacturer information.

[jaybee]

EHLOVader, on 31 January 2012 - 05:41 PM, said:

It shouldn't require any core modifications. First read through these docs. They will be helpful:

Developing Modules
Developing a simple module
Extending existing models
Extend manufacturer model
Extend Manufacturer Form
Shop_Manufacturer Class

You will want to make a module that extends the manufacturers model with a field for storing the group.

To flesh this out into something more maintainable you might even considering creating a table for storing the group, and using a table relation to bind the manufacturers together.

I have been converted, I now know of at least one case where a grouping of mfgs would help. Although I would have to go a step further and provide Brands, product lines, and a few other specialty classifications which can help provide a hierarchical structure to the manufacturer information.

@EHLOVader Hey, many thanks for your advice. I've only just got a chance to look at this again.

I have successfully built a little custom module which extends the manufacturer model with a new field called 'Gender'. All is working well, although it would be useful to be able to have this as a drop down menu – there doesn't seem to be an event, such as shop:onGetProductFieldOptions, to cater for this.

Is there any other way of implementing a drop down?

[jaybee]

Just created a new post for this question: http://forum.lemonst...drop-down-menu/