Categories Side Menu - sub items

ryan · Feb 4th 2019

I think it'd be a tricky template to recreate in any language, twig included. I think going down the each route is slower in terms of performance and going down 4 levels would get messy.

I do think it's doable with a template, but I can't dedicate enough time to solve it easily. There will be a way to do it in Perch, it's just working out the best way and something that's clean in implementation.

dazglaser · Feb 4th 2019

Thanks for your insight Ryan, very much appreciated.

Drew or anyone else have any suggestions?

hus_hmd · Feb 5th 2019

Hello dazglaser

You can expand your original solution for the 2 levels and make it more dynamic to handle any number of levels:

PHP

perch_categories([
'set' => 'products',
'filter' => 'catParentID',
'match' => 'eq',
'value' => 0,
'each' => function($item) {
$item['level'] = 1;
$item['subitems'] = get_sub_categories($item);
return $item;
}
]);

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Note I'm using a function get_sub_categories() inside the each option. This allows you to handle things more dynamically. If you really need separate templates:

PHP

function get_sub_categories($item) {
// default template
$template = 'category.html';
// templates for each level
$templates = [
'2' => 'category_2.html',
'3' => 'category_3.html',
'4' => 'category_4.html',
];
// $item['level'] would be the level of the previous item
// check if there's a dedicated template for the next
if(isset($templates[$item['level'] + 1])) {
$template = $templates[$item['level'] + 1];
}
// get subitems
$subitems = perch_categories([
'template' => $template,
'filter' => [
[
'filter' => 'setID',
'value' => $item['setID'],
],
[
'filter' => 'catParentID',
'value' => $item['catID'],
]
],
'each' => function($item) {
// attempt to get subitems if any exists
$item['level'] = substr_count($item['catTreePosition'], '-');
$item['subitems'] = get_sub_categories($item);
return $item;
}
], true);
return $subitems;
}

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If you only need to apply a different CSS class based on the level, you can remove the first bit of the function and rely on conditional tags inside the template:

PHP

function get_sub_categories($item) {
// default template
$template = 'category.html';
// get subitems
$subitems = perch_categories([
'template' => $template,
'filter' => [
[
'filter' => 'setID',
'value' => $item['setID'],
],
[
'filter' => 'catParentID',
'value' => $item['catID'],
]
],
'each' => function($item) {
// attempt to get subitems if any exists
$item['level'] = substr_count($item['catTreePosition'], '-');
$item['subitems'] = get_sub_categories($item);
return $item;
}
], true);
return $subitems;
}

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All your templates would need to have the following to display the subitems:

HTML

<perch:category id="subitems" html>

dazglaser · Feb 5th 2019

@hus_hmd

Mate, that works a treat - you're a star.

dazglaser · Feb 5th 2019

@hus_hmd

dazglaser · Feb 13th 2019

Hi,

If you change the name of the default category:

// default template
$template = 'categorylevel_1.html';

it doesn't actually use that template, it only uses category.html for level 1.

If I then put my level 1 code into category.html it breaks the actual category system in Perch CMS.

Does that make sense?

I'm just trying to specify another template for level 1 other than the default category.html

hus_hmd · Feb 14th 2019

That's the default category for the sub-levels (it's inside a function called get_sub_categories()). Apologies if my comment caused some confusion.

The first level is output by the initial perch_categories() call:

PHP

perch_categories([
'template' => 'category_level_1.html',
'set' => 'products',
'filter' => 'catParentID',
'match' => 'eq',
'value' => 0,
'each' => function($item) {
$item['level'] = 1;
$item['subitems'] = get_sub_categories($item);
return $item;
}
]);

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