668 replies to this topic

[JvdP]

kymation, on Jul 19 2009, 03:04 AM, said:

The comparison list should be restricted to the current category. Are you seeing products from all categories, or just subcategories? Neither should be showing. I haven't seen this.

It realy shows all products, see linked image.
Action is slected and all products of the subcategories are listed. (the first two are linked copies, both are not in action)

Manufacturer is a multi-pulldown with class Multiple. However, it is not avaialble for filtering.

Quote

I have both checkboxes and radio buttons set up on my test store, and both work. Note that checkboxes must be set with a Multi class or they'll mess up. Otherwise I'm unable to figure out what's wrong here.

Class is Multiple. Did you test a combinations of filters as well? First tick one or two checkboxes and then a radiobutoon. The radiobutton triggers the filter and not the filterbutton beneath the checkboxes. The ticked checkboxes are ignored in the filter action. Updating the filterlist after each change of checkbox set could fix this.

regards,
Jerome

[kymation]

The comparison list uses $current_category_id to get the category to list. This value is set in application_top.php. I don't see how the code could even determine the parent category. I need to look at this one some more.

Manufacturer using a multi-pulldown seems to have a SQL bug. On the list.

Filters are individual actions. You can't change more than one of them at a time and expect it to work. This could be changed to submit all filters at once, but that causes a bunch of additional problems. Not to mention completely rewriting that part of the code. Are customers really going to want to change a bunch of filters all at one time?

Regards
Jim

[JvdP]

kymation, on Jul 19 2009, 06:50 PM, said:

Are customers really going to want to change a bunch of filters all at one time?

I think so, especially when there are more than one Multiple class filters. See this picture. Would you click the appropiate find-matching-products button after a change in each set? Or would you change a bunch of filters all at one time?

This problem could be solved by updating the filter result after each checkbox has been changed; either check or uncheck a particullar box will update the list of prducts. A filter button is no longer needed and the list of products shown is always matching the filter settings.

For each filtertype the following events may trigger the filter:

• Pulldown: selecting particular row = as it is now
  
• Radiobutton: selecting particular button = as it is now except from the second click
  
• Listof links: selecting particular link = as it is now, (however, in my case, the filter ended with a "+" symbol, this appears to disturb the filtering)
  
• Text box: when focus is lost from the textinput box. Though, this one could be tricky, I think hitting enter or a search button next to the input field could work.
  
• Multi-pulldown: on every row select/unselect action
  
• Check boxes: on every box select/unselect action
  
• Images: selecting particular image = as it is now
  
• Multi-images: on every image select/unselect action

Regards,
Jerome

[JvdP]

Forgot one question:

Is it possible, when a subcategory has the same filters, filter result will include the products of that subcategory? But products from that subcategory only, not the parent nor any sibbling categories; These can be searched from a higher category.

Regards,
Jerome

[kymation]

For muti-selects, you would have to select each value, one at a time, and then wait for a refresh before adding the next one. This seems clumsy to me. The other way to do it is to have one Update button for all filters, to update all changes at once. I've seen this done, and it feels clumsy as well. I was trying to automate this to make it as easy as possible. Maybe this could be an option, so the store owner can choose how it will work with their setup. It's still going to take a lot of work to code this for a single update for all filters.

To answer your question: That's the way it is supposed to work. The output should be all of the products in the current category, excluding subcategories, that meet the filter constraints. Filters applied at the top level, with no category set, will include products from all categories and subcategories. This follows the category structure of osCommerce.

Regards
Jim

[JvdP]

Thanks for your reply.

kymation, on Jul 19 2009, 10:14 PM, said:

For muti-selects, you would have to select each value, one at a time, and then wait for a refresh before adding the next one. This seems clumsy to me.

I know webstores which have filters like that, see the sites mentioned in post 26 for example. All depends on how fast the list can be refreshed. A long loading time (e.g. >1 sec) seems clumsy indeed. But much faster refreshing rates will work quite well.

The coding seems not to be too complicated, hopefully you will find it worth a try to see if this could work. However, if this doesn't work, I would not focus on code for a single update for all filters at this moment.

Regards,
Jerome

Edited by JvdP, 19 July 2009 - 09:43 PM.

[Yarhajile]

First off I want to say thanks for putting this great addon together. This is really going to change the way our site operates and hopefully bring in some extra orders!

I have a question about the filters.  If I want to create a product filter for "Gender", would I need to create an additional "gender" field in the products table? Or is this handled in another way.  I've successfully used the "Use existing database field" to create filters for price and a couple other test fields, but not any new fields.

Also, we have a couple hundred different manufacturers that products are assigned to. Does that mean that I need to create filters for each one of those products in a "Manufacturers" specification? Or am I not seeing how to have that filter list automatically populated.

Again, thanks for the fantastic work on this! Look forward to seeing it grow.

[kymation]

You don't need to add any table fields, other than what the SQL file in the distribution adds. Just leave the Use existing database field set to none and edit/add products. There will be a field to fill in for each new Specification. One per language, actually.

You currently need to add Manufacturers to the filter by hand. I've been thinking about ways to automate this, or add an Import feature, but I haven't settled on anything yet. I will add that to the requested features list.

Regards
Jim

[Yarhajile]

Perfect, that worked exactly as I expected! Thanks for the quick reply.  

What's the purpose of the specification_values table? I don't see anything in the code that does any REAL interaction with that table (other than in a copy operation).

One other thing, what is the "Enter filter as" field when adding/creating a specification? I've tried using the different options, but haven't seen yet where that is used.

Fantastic work, works great even in it's early stages!

[kymation]

Those settings aren't used yet. When I get the code working, they will allow you to select values in the Add/Edit Product page (e.g. by a pulldown) rather than typing into a text field. It's intended to make the product data entry faster and more foolproof. Of course you will still be able to use text entry if you want to.

Regards
Jim

[jonathanbastin]

For anyone that want's to see this working visit http://www.excelitservices.co.uk/shop/pre-...-26_51_124.html

[kymation]

Your In Stock is not correctly set up. You need a value other than 0, and probably more than one. That actually shouldn't even show, since you only have one value set up. Another bug.

Please tell me that's not a live store. This addon isn't safe to use yet.

Regards
Jim

[jonathanbastin]

kymation, on Jul 23 2009, 03:09 AM, said:

Your In Stock is not correctly set up. You need a value other than 0, and probably more than one. That actually shouldn't even show, since you only have one value set up. Another bug.

Please tell me that's not a live store. This addon isn't safe to use yet.

Regards
Jim

Yes it is a live store but everything has been tested and yes there is a bug or two but on the whole I am happy to use. I really need to so decided for the bug or two it was now worth it. In terms of the stock I have changed it to show if there is only 1. Your default SQL setting was a min of two. The way I did it was the only way I could get it to work.

[kymation]

You can change the minimum in the Admin -> Configuration -> Products Specifications -> Minimum Spec Filter. Set it to 1 () will let you do what you want. The default is there for testing.

By "not safe to use" I mean it is not secure. You are leaving yourself open for hacking. Not advised, but that's your call.

Regards
Jim

[jonathanbastin]

kymation, on Jul 23 2009, 06:03 PM, said:

You can change the minimum in the Admin -> Configuration -> Products Specifications -> Minimum Spec Filter. Set it to 1 () will let you do what you want. The default is there for testing.

By "not safe to use" I mean it is not secure. You are leaving yourself open for hacking. Not advised, but that's your call.

Regards
Jim

Correct that is what I changed. I have found some bugs in the range filter which returns the wrong results so I have switched the filter off for now.

[kymation]

I need to know detailed information on your errors before I can fix them.

Regards
Jim

[JvdP]

jonathanbastin, on Jul 24 2009, 09:20 AM, said:

Correct that is what I changed. I have found some bugs in the range filter which returns the wrong results so I have switched the filter off for now.

That's an odd way of testing alpha software.

[jonathanbastin]

On the search filter I setup a range for say Hdd space. If I searched for say 0-32 it returned items with 120 as well as other in the range. I did set one up for CPU and it worked ok just wasn't over happy with Hdd space.

[kymation]

Not enough information. I can't do anything with vague summaries.

Regards
Jim

[jonathanbastin]

JvdP, on Jul 24 2009, 05:07 PM, said:

That's an odd way of testing alpha software.

Yes I agree with that but as most people were saying for the filter there were no bugs found I put it on a dev box first and at first didn't see any probs. After playing I found 1 or 2 but on the whole I really like it and it does (apart from the bugz) what I exactly need.

1 nice extra would be to search for something in the filter but dispay different text to the user.