Thread

Hi all,

I am working on a pretty complex project on EE 2.1.0 and running into this issue. I have tons of categories/sub-categories and some of the sub-categories belong to more than one parent. For example:

Juice Category
- Apples
- Oranges
   - With Pulp
   - Without Pulp
- Grapes

Grocery List Category
- Oranges
   - With Pulp
   - Without Pulp
- Kiwi

My question is: Is there a way to create just one Oranges sub-category and reuse it in other places? (in my example, there should be only one master of Oranges even though I use it more than once.)

Thanks in advance for your help

Cheers
Rudy Affandi

That’s a good question. One idea might be to add some extra extra category fields to act as a “flag” so you can customise the output of your category lists.

Here’s what I’d do (not tested):

Create two custom SELECT fields for your categories with options Yes and No.

Field name: Show in juices
Field short name: juices_show
Options: Yes/No

Field name: Show in grocery list
Field short name: grocery_show
Options: Yes/No

Then in your template add two category tags.

<h2>Juices</h2>
<p>{exp:channel:categories category_group="1|2"}<br />
{if juices_show == "Yes"}<br />
{category_name}<br />
{/if}<br />
{/exp:channel:categories}</p>

<h2>Grocery List Category</h2>
<p>{exp:channel:categories category_group="1|2"}<br />
{if grocery_show == "Yes"}<br />
{category_name}<br />
{/if}<br />
{/exp:channel:categories}

Work through your categories setting the Yes/No’s as appropriate. You will need to play around with the tag parameters and variables to get the desired output.

Some good advice there from bluedreamer. Would that work in your particular setup Rudy?

I am going to move this thread to the CodeShare Corner so the conversation can continue

Thanks Rob for the reply. Unfortunately your proposed solution won’t work with the scope of my project. I have over 500 categories/sub categories and the problem is that one sub category that resides on the secondary level on one site can become a copy/alias on a 3rd or 4th level category on another site.

I also looked into using Channel to simulate Categories and created custom field using Playa to create Item Children but it is very difficult to control the hierarchy properly without using many templates. I don’t think EE is geared for that at the moment. I think native “Parent/Children” relationthip for channel entries on EE is the way to go.

For now, my solution is to create duplicate categories and manual copy of all the content inside them until there is a sensible solution.

Thanks again for the reply and also to you John.

Rudy

For now, my solution is to create duplicate categories and manual copy of all the content inside them until there is a sensible solution.

WOW Rudy.
That’s alot of copying and pasting!

I can’t help wonder if there is already some addon available at devot-ee.com?