Multi Parent Categories

[mvasquez]

I may have asked this before, but I am trying to figure out a way to accomplish showing a category in multiple children categories. IE I have a Parent Category that has products assigned and information, and I want to be able to nest it as a child under 3 or 4 other categories so I can create all the info once, but have multiple ways to access it.

So in our world, for example, I have Hose and Fittings as a Parent. I then have a child of Steel Fittings that I want to show under Hose and Fittings parent and Adapters parent so customers can choose from it in multiple areas of the store (outside of nav elements that I can customize in ReadyTheme).

Thanks in advance for any input, and have a great thanksgiving!

[Kent Multer]

Miva categories are organized in a tree structure. Each can have multiple children, but only one parent. One way to work around this is simply to assign products to more than one category; there's no limit on that. You may also be able to do something creative with custom fields and faceted searches, to create a "category-like" experience for your customers.

[mvasquez]

Right, so another example is our Industries pages.

We have industries like Car Wash (parent cat) and Marine (parent cat). We then want to list the same parent of Fittings in both categories. Currently, I have to create Carwash-Fittings and Marine-Fittings and assign products to both of them and thus, manage two separate categories of products when things are updated... I'd love to be able to nest Fittings under Car Wash and Marine and have one Parent to modify that updates both.

[Leanne]

Can you not add a custom field to Car Wash and Marine, and then add Fittings in both and use the cxp function from here: https://docs.miva.com/code-samples/cxp to load the product info from fittings? You might need Category_HDFT_Load and some of the other API functions as well to properly display the Fittings "subcat", but it should be doable.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Can you not add a custom field to Car Wash and Marine, and then add Fittings in both and use the cxp function from here: https://docs.miva.com/code-samples/cxp to load the product info from fittings? You might need Category_HDFT_Load and some of the other API functions as well to properly display the Fittings "subcat", but it should be doable.

That's the way we've been doing it whenever there is cause for products in multiple categories (sans toolkit cxp--just use miva's)

[Leanne]

For the record, I didn't mean Toolkit's cxp -- that's the "name" of the code sample on the page I linked. :)

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

LOL. You expect me to actually read the entire post :)

[mvasquez]

Thanks for the feedback - I will look into this function a little deeper and see if this will solve our issues! Have a great weekend!

[cpp-dev]

mvasquez Did you come to a resolution for this?

[mvasquez]

cpp-dev we had our developer custom code a field that he populates with the add'l categories we want to show and then he uses built in Miva functions to iterate and show the subcats. PM me for the info if you'd like.

[cpp-dev]

mvasquez Will do! Thank you!

[afiumano]

We need to do this as well - are there any code examples anywhere? Primarily, we need the breadcrumbs to reflect the 'category' a user is in since we have to divide our store by industry (which is the Main category) and some subcategories belong to more than one industry.

[Kent Multer]

We need to do this as well - are there any code examples anywhere? Primarily, we need the breadcrumbs to reflect the 'category' a user is in since we have to divide our store by industry (which is the Main category) and some subcategories belong to more than one industry.

Breadcrumbs may require some thought. If a category has more than one parent, how do you decide which "trail" to show the customer? Or more precisely: how do you save that information in the store, and get the store to display it the way you want?

[lesliekirk]

Breadcrumbs may require some thought. If a category has more than one parent, how do you decide which "trail" to show the customer? Or more precisely: how do you save that information in the store, and get the store to display it the way you want?

I would want it to show the category it just came from - if it were for me.

[Kent Multer]

I would want it to show the category it just came from - if it were for me.

Yes, but sometimes people arrive at a product page other ways. They may click a link on a Featured Products or Related products list, a search-engine page, etc.