Please?

Hello,

I could have sworn I've seen this somewhere here before, but searching has failed me... so...

Is there a way to select multiple categories in catalogues, so that you could create a catalogue item that would exist happily in more than one category?

For example: I've got a weapons catalogue, and I have sword and martial arts weapons categories. The katana should exist in both categories. As things stand right now, I'd have to create the katana twice if I wanted to put it in both categories. However, IF I could select both those categories, then the katana would only need to be created once. This would also allow me to easily display which category of catalgoue I desire with the weapon showing up for either. 

 

Question: Is it possible to display items in one catalogue in another when using the catalogue embedded box in a page? The "Selectcode" feature makes it seem like it could be possible. If so, this could provide me with a solution, if only I knew how selectcodes worked...

Ok, thanks to a chat with ,

I have a work around for my situation. Selectcode and Filtercode.

Use the Selectcode to identify the categories I want to pull from…. example 12*,13*,14*
Use Filtercode to identify the meta_keywords I want to reference… example "meta_keyword#Armed Melee Offensive Skills"

Using those tools, I can put my catalogue entries in one category that they would appear in first, and call those entries to be with different categories on the pages that I need them on. This way I could have a skill that is in Unarmed Combat category show up in both the Unarmed Combat page and the Armed Combat page if that skill would fit both categories. This solves the need to also make duplicate entries.

It isn't as, um, nice? as say being able to select multiple categories when making catalogue entries, but it works! And it would allow me a little extra freedom even.

Thanks again Chris!

So to answer the original question here…

No, we don't have multi-categorisation support for catalogues. Or most content types.
There's a tracker issue for it 0001888: Support node structure for all categories & full multi-categorisation. - Composr CMS feature tracker

Another workaround is to use reference fields. You can add a multiple references field to a catalogue so that you can specify all the catalogue categories that entry is referencing. Then you can pull things out based on that using various possible filtering techniques (Filtercode and also the CATALOGUE_ENTRY_BACKREFS symbol come to mind).

There's a lot of flexibility there but it gets complicated to use it all to the degree possible and involves a lot of different Composr technologies, such as advanced Tempcode and template editing.

I'd love to spend some time adding a lot more features that are immediately available without low-level stuff being needed. But it would really be a lot of time, like months of full-time work just on catalogues. To improve the level of flexibility to help people, a lot of complex abstract programming is needed, and a lot of different features to try and capture all the different kinds of things people would like to do.

It's cool . There's a perfectly fine work around that accomplishes for me the same thing. Besides, it is actually closer to good database design anyhow. Database entries should never be duplicated, only linked or joined via relationships. Multiple catagory selection is a bad habit. Using Selectcode and Filtercode or as you mentioned above, reference fields, is good database design. I am rather quite pleased with the results of it.