CREATING A PRODUCT CATEGORY SEARCH FORM THAT POPULATES IT'S OPTIONS LIST FROM VALUES IN EXISTING RECORDS - Dec 27th, 2012


I’m a big fan of pulling list values from a multi-record master category table. That way, there are no misspellings to
throw off subsequent searches.

I had a fairly comprehensive list of categories that could be assigned to products, however, I wanted the viewer search
filter form to offer only those category choices that would render results and I didn’t want to have any duplicates in
the options list.

The multi-record master category section (mobility_aid_categories) has only one text field (category)

The multi-record section that contains the actual listings records (mobility_aids) has a required list field
(mobility_aid_category) that pulls it’s option labels from the category field and it’s option values from the record
number field of the mobility_aid_categories table. Each listing record must be assigned to a specific category.

With a bit of help from Greg Thomas a programming guru at Interactive Tools, we came up with the following.

The load records call code (with a variable $categorygroup defined) in the viewer looks like this:

<?php
// load records from 'mobility_aids'
list($mobility_aidsRecords, $mobility_aidsMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'mobility_aids',
'loadUploads' => true,
'allowSearch' => true,
));

list($mobility_aid_categoryRecords, $mobility_aid_categoryMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'mobility_aid_category',
));

$categorygroup = array_filter(array_pluck($mobility_aid_categoryRecords, 'category'));

?>

The viewer search form code looks like this:



<form method="POST" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>">
<?php
//Create an array to store the values that have been selected
$selectArray = array();
//foreach section item
foreach($mobility_aidsRecords as $record){
//If the record has something selected for mobility_aid_category
if(@$record['mobility_aid_category:label']){
//If the selected value isn't already in the array
if(!in_array(@$record['mobility_aid_category:label'],$selectArray)){
//Add it to the $selectArray
$selectArray[$record['mobility_aid_category']] = $record['mobility_aid_category:label'];
}
}
}
?>
<div class="body-text">
<select name="mobility_aid_category" >
<option value= "">Choose The Category To Display And Click/Tap The Search Button</option>
<?php foreach ($selectArray as $value => $name): ?>
<option value="<?php echo $value; ?>"><?php echo $name; ?></option>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</select>
</div>
<br /><input type="submit" name="submit" value="Search">
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
<input type="submit" value="Click/Tap To Cancel Search Filters" />
</form>


and the viewer code for the listings themselves look like this:


<?PHP
function wordCount($textOrHtml) {
$text = strip_tags($textOrHtml, "<b></b><i></i>");
$words = preg_split("/\s+/", $text);

return count($words);
}
?>
<table width="100%" align="center"border="0" cellpadding="10">
<tr>
<td><?php foreach ($categorygroup as $group): ?>
<div class=" heading-text-12"><?php foreach ($mobility_aidsRecords as $record): ?><?php if
($record['mobility_aid_category:label'] == $group) : ?> <?php echo strtoupper($group); ?><?php break ?><?php endif;
?><?php endforeach ?>
</div>
<?php foreach ($mobility_aidsRecords as $record): ?>
<?php if ($record['mobility_aid_category:label'] == $group) : ?>
<?php $name = htmlspecialchars($record['name']); ?>
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td width="150" height="150" align="center" valign="middle"><?php foreach ($record['image'] as $index => $upload):
?>
<a href="<?php echo $record['_link']; ?>"><img src="<?php echo $upload['thumbUrlPath'] ?>" width="<?php echo
$upload['thumbWidth'] ?>" height="<?php echo $upload['thumbHeight'] ?>" alt="" /></a>
<?php endforeach ?>
</td>
<td>
<a href="<?php echo $record['_link']; ?>"><span class="heading-text-12"><b><?php echo
strtoupper($name); ?></b></span></a><br /> <br />
<div align="left" class=" body-text-9"><?php echo maxWords($record['description'], 25); ?>
<?php $words = 25 ?>
<?php if (wordCount($record['description']) > $words) : ?>
<span class=" body-text-9">...</span><a href="<?php echo $record['_link']; ?>"><span class="
body-text-bold-italic-10"> READ MORE</span></a></td>
</tr>
</table>



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