Displaying Product Categories

talofo · August 29th, 2009, 10:35 PM

Hello Thomas Myer,

Thanks a lot for this great book. I'm following it page by page. :)

From: 89 to 92.

I have no idea what to do any more:

On my view v_header,I'm getting the links with url and category name.:

Code:

<?php
echo "<ul>";
foreach ($listacategorias as $categoria)
{
   echo "<li>";
   echo anchor("c_categoria/$categoria->id_cat",$categoria->nome_cat);
   echo "</li>";
}
echo "</ul>";

This works. Nice.
It will give me something like:
http://site.com/c_categoria/1
http://site.com/c_categoria/2
http://site.com/c_categoria/3

The issue is that, when I click on those links I get a 404 error.

Please help me out:

In my controller c_categoria, I'm having the following:

Code:

function cat($id)
{
    $cat = $this->M_Categoria->getCategoria($id);
                
    $data['titulo'] = "As nossas soluÃ§Ãµes para ".$cat->nome_cat;
    $data['listacategorias'] = $this->M_Categoria->getCategoriasPrincipais();
        
    $data['categoria'] = $cat;
        
    //o homepage_tpl should get this value:    
    $data['main'] = 'v_categoria';
        
        
    $this->load->vars($data);
    $this->load->view('homepage_tpl');
        
}

My template homepage_tpl, grab the array key main as $main, here:

Code:

<div id="container">
        
<?php $this->load->view('v_header'); ?>;
            
<?php $this->load->view($main); ?>;
    
<?php $this->load->view('v_footer'); ?>;
    
</div>

Can anyone help me out on debugging this, and understand why I'm I getting a 404 ?

:(
MÃ¡rcio

Ps- on the controller I have also tried like this:
$cat = $this->M_Categoria->getCategoria($this->uri->segment(3));

No luck. Same 404 as ever.

ps 2 -
It's a shame that Claudia only wants one subcategory and then products. I do have a similar situation but, my Claudia wants multi categories, and I'm struggling about how can I do that.

If it's possible, could you or anyone else, grasp the logic behind the process of building a product category with n categories instead?

talofo · August 30th, 2009, 09:51 AM

Ok.

Solved. I was not passing an id on the anchor argument.
I missed one segment on anchor URI build.

Still,

I do believe Claudia would be much more happier with a n level category solution. At lest, if she want, (we never know) on the future, have another sub sub sub category, she could create one.

Regards,
MÃ¡rcio

myerman · August 30th, 2009, 10:34 AM

Well, I dunno if what you propose is actually doable, where you pass in an ID straight to the controller without even calling a function. In fact, I think it's pretty much not doable.

However...what you could do is set up a series of aliases that let you do that--for example, in your routes file you could work it such that any category/1, category/2, category/n link actually gets processed by category/view/n

talofo · August 30th, 2009, 11:58 AM

Hello,

Nice. I'm talking with my book author. I'm used to read philosophy books, and believe me, I've never had the pleasure. Plato's is long away gone. :)

(you may read after the bold only). :)

Quote:

Well, I dunno if what you propose is actually doable, where you pass in an ID straight to the controller without even calling a function.

Yes. The all point was to avoid the duplication on the URI like /category/cat/ and product/prod/ or something like this.
I was trying to do that inside the index method of the controller, but, for actually make that work, I needed to explicitly write the /index/ on the URI, (since CI only passes segments values as variables after the second segment. (I believe we can change this, but I don't feel like)) - but, having /category/cat/ or /category/index/ it stills not to be a clean method for this site URIs.

But maybe it will be there where the Routing you have mentioned above, may help hm? I don't know because, here:
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/routing.html
it seems that all the examples tend to work out solution for when a user types directly the url on the browser. But Maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, I'm missing the point already:

I'm now having a method other then index on my controller to handle it.

Question:
on the first code snipped on page 91:

You have:
$data['category']=$cat;

I believe this is a key step on all this, but I don't quite get what does it do... let's see:

We are storing a specific category id coming from the 3th segment on our URI, to a variable name $cat, and, we have storing that $cat on an array key named category.

That array key among other keys, will then be loaded to be accessible on all views, and then, we load a template view to grab and work with that $data.

I now expect to see some $category somewhere... on the view file, since CI transforms keys to $vars (I don't recall the php function that does that) and, on page 96, here it is, or $category var.

If all this assumptions are correct:
I'm not quite getting, how can we just do something like $category->name for example, and grab the name.
If the $category as an ID on it, let's suppose, 3, it seems that we are telling: 3->name, and doesn't make sense...

Regards,
MÃ¡rcio

talofo · September 1st, 2009, 11:52 AM

Actually, after some sleep, I have look at the model, and I see that:

Quote:

"We are storing a specific category id coming from the 3th segment on our URI, to a variable name $cat"

is FALSE.

What I'm getting is a specific ROW data from my database, where an $id equals a specifc value that comes from the URI.

Hence, dissipating the doubts I was having on last post.

Regards,
MÃ¡rcio

myerman · September 2nd, 2009, 08:15 AM

I'm hammering away at various deadlines and didn't get a chance to come back here until just now. After the 15th of september, I will be more available.

talofo · October 12th, 2009, 09:53 AM

Hello Thomas, once again,

I'm really REALLY trying hard to display a menu that could contain, not only two, but several sub categories.

http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/128272/

http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/128561/

No sucess, at all.

I'm following your book so, all the template and page structure, commes from your ideas, that I happen to understand. So, what I'd like to ask is:

You have give an example, where there's only one category and one subcategory. Can we use the same structure to accomplish the view for more then one sub-category? Can we use the same structure to work with n subcategories? Or, in order do allow n categories, we need to change a lot on this code structure?

If possible, please advice, I'm absolutly stuck here.

Regards,
MÃ¡rcio