Thread

I have a form to search recipes. These recipes are categorized in multiple ways. I’d like to offer a user a way to narrow their search results by selecting multiple categories, without having to use the multiple select list (which the audience of this site simply won’t understand).

Right now I have this:

{exp:search:simple_form id="recipesearchform" search_in="entries" status="open" where="any" results="10" weblog="recipe-upload"}
<div>
    <label for="searchrecipes">Search recipes</label>
    <input type="text" class="searchtext" value="" maxlength="100" name="keywords" id="searchrecipes" />
    <input type="image" src="/css/cssimages/button-search.png" class="submit" id="searchrecipessubmit" value="Go" />
</div>
<div>
    <select name='cat_id[]'>
        <option value="" selected="selected">Cuisine Type</option>
        {exp:weblog:categories weblog="recipe-upload" style="linear" category_group="6"}<option value="{category_id}">{category_name}</option>
        {/exp:weblog:categories}
    </select>
    <select name='cat_id[]'>
        <option value="" selected="selected">Recipe Category</option>
        {exp:weblog:categories weblog="recipe-upload" style="linear" category_group="2"}<option value="{category_id}">{category_name}</option>
        {/exp:weblog:categories}
    </select>
    <select name='cat_id[]'>
        <option value="" selected="selected">Menu Category</option>
        {exp:weblog:categories weblog="recipe-upload" style="linear" category_group="3"}<option value="{category_id}">{category_name}</option>
        {/exp:weblog:categories}
    </select>
    <select name='cat_id[]'>
        <option value="" selected="selected">Price Range</option>
        {exp:weblog:categories weblog="recipe-upload" style="linear" category_group="7"}<option value="{category_id}">{category_name}</option>
        {/exp:weblog:categories}
    </select>
    <input type="image" src="/css/cssimages/button-search.png" class="submit" id="searchrecipessubmit2" value="Go" />
</div>
{/exp:search:simple_form}

What it’s doing right now is applying the last <select name=“cat_id[]”> parameters to filter the search results (ie by Price Range), and ignoring the other categories. How can I get it to filter by whichever categories the user picks in the dropdowns?

Thanks!

sounds like a custom query is going to be the easiest way to do this.

Custom queries make my head hurt. 😊 Any pointing in the right direction would be appreciated. 😊

http://www.navicat.com/ 😉

and for windows: SQLyog
consider using checkboxes vs. select lists and then using query with cat1= x AND cat2=y.

is “Price Range” set of categories of pre-set prices?
0-100
100-500
500-1000
kinda thing?

Thanks, but I’m afraid this is quickly going over my head. Also, the design dictates a series of select lists, not checkboxes, unfortunately.

Edited to add: Yes, price range are pre-defined ranges (under $5, $5.01 - $10, etc)

Hi Ridge,
I don’t know much how the search is built but looking at the documentation there does not seem to be the way to daisy-chain the cat IDs when broken down by category groups.
I do believe it is possible with custom query but this would also mean that your results page would be custom vs. using results page. Which could be quite a bit of leg work.

OK, well as I don’t know enough about custom queries to attempt this (and certainly not with the deadline for this site fast approaching) I guess I’ll have to table this, unless anyone can offer a suggestion/extension/plugin that would help.