Canonical Category Code

[kwgarrett]

Re: Canonical Category Code

Am I missing something? There's a standard SMT field called "Canonical Category Code." Yet there's no way to retrieve it without a third party module, and only then through a programming rigmarole? Why? Please tell me I'm missing something.

Kevin Garrett

[Brennan]

Re: Canonical Category Code

Hey Kevin -


Unfortunately only the canonical category id is available in the template language. I'll work with development so the code is also available. Right now, the only way to get the code is to look it up using toolkit.


The reason it is not there now is the canonical category code was designed to be purely for Miva breadcrumb functionality. It was not intended to be used as the SEO canonical meta tag, even though they share the same name. The Miva Canonical Category code was designed to be used from pages like search or a direct link to a product (without a category code). If a canonical category code was defined for a product this category is used to populate the category tree and breadcrumb data.


Here is the order of operations for Miva on determining which breadcrumb path to use:


1. Use Category_Code parameter defined in url, if that does not exist...
2. Look at the page referrer and try and determine category visitor came from
3. Look up products canonical category if it exists


When Miva built in the "Smart Breadcrumbs" the canonical category code was one of the components to making them "smart" or the ability to figure out which category code to use. This allowed you to setup your URL structure without having the category code in the URL structure and Miva just knows what category you came from.


However, I can see the use case where you would also want to use Miva's Canonical Category to populate the canonical meta tag which is why having the code available in the template language would be useful.

[kwgarrett]

Re: Canonical Category Code

Indeed, it would be useful and only expected that a prominently displayed field would be accessible to SMT coding. I revisited this thread because I had another need (besides canonical meta tag) for the canonical category for a product. I'm doing a rearchitecture of my store in a way that I'm sure was not envisioned by Miva's coders. The fewer custom fields and toolkit calls the better.

Kevin Garrett

[Brennan]

Re: Canonical Category Code

I spoke with development today about this and they filed a bug on it. It should make it into the Version 9 release.

[lesliekirk]

Re: Canonical Category Code

Has the Canonical Category Code become available without using the Toolkit?

[lesliekirk]

Re: Canonical Category Code

Dan is correct, only the canonical category id is available in the template code:

&mvt:product:cancat_id;
and
l.settings:product:cancat_id

You could then use toolkit's catinfo function to look up the code:

<mvt:item name="toolkit" param="catinfo|catvar||l.all_settings:product:cancat_id" />
<mvt:item name="toolkit" param="vassign|cat_code|g.catvar:code" />
&mvt:global:cat_code;

I used this to generate the Canonical Category Code - it was working when I tested it, now it's not:

 <mvt:if expr="NOT ISNULL l.all_settings:product:cancat_id">
            <mvt:item name="toolkit" param="catinfo|catvar||l.all_settings:product:cancat_id" />
            <mvt:item name="toolkit" param="vassign|cat_code|g.catvar:code" />
            <h2 class="text-center"><a href="http://&mvt:global:domain:name;/&mvt:global:cat_code;/&mvta:product:code;.html">&mvt:product:name;</a></h2>
            <mvt:else>
            <h2 class="text-center"><a href="http://&mvt:global:domain:name;/&mvta:category:code;/&mvta:product:code;.html">&mvt:product:name;</a></h2>
          </mvt:if>

Why would it work, then quit?

Leslie

[Brennan]

Re: Canonical Category Code

Hi Leslie -

I just checked and we still have an open bug for this. I'll try to get it in the next update.

Nothing should have changed with the code above. Is toolkit still active on the page?

[lesliekirk]

Re: Canonical Category Code

It seems to work when I remove the conditional to test for the Canonical Category Code. Not sure why the conditional stopped working.

[chrisjumpusa]

Re: Canonical Category Code

It seems to work when I remove the conditional to test for the Canonical Category Code. Not sure why the conditional stopped working.

Were you ever able to figure this out Leslie? I can get the Category ID to print but not convert/display the Category Code.

Thanks,
Chris

[dcarver]

Re: Canonical Category Code

Were you ever able to figure this out Leslie? I can get the Category ID to print but not convert/display the Category Code.

Thanks,
Chris

Chris, if you're using engine 5.21 or greater you can do this

<mvt:do name="l.return" file="g.Module_Library_DB" value="Category_Load_ID( l.settings:product:cancat_id, l.category )" />
<mvt:eval expr="l.category:code" />

[dcarver]

Re: Canonical Category Code

This issue has been fixed and will be released in 9.4

[lesliekirk]

Re: Canonical Category Code

This issue has been fixed and will be released in 9.4

Hi David,

So now what is the way to pull in the correct category link on Alternate Page Displays?

<link rel="canonical" href="&mvte:category:link;" />

It seems to be pulling in the Page code instead of the Category Code.

Thanks,
Leslie