Category.php - products show in subcats but not in categories if it has no subcategories

Question

Below is my category.php that uses a switch statement to either show subcategories or products. When i click on a subcategory, it displays the products like it's supposed to. However, if the category has NO SUBCATEGORIES, no products will show at all.

Is this a case where the switch statement needs to be altered, the entire foreach loop needs to be in an if statement or is there something wrong with the db and the ids... all of my cats in the menu have a parent_id = 0, subcats correspond to the id for the category table, the products are assigned a category_id. Is this a JOIN thing?

<?php
foreach ($listing as $key => $list){
echo "<img src='".$list['thumbnail']."' border='0' align='left' />";
echo "<h4>";

switch($level){
    case "1":
    echo anchor('welcome/cat/'.$list['id'],$list['name']);
    break;
    case "2":
    echo anchor('welcome/product/'.$list['id'],$list['name']);
    break;

}
echo "</h4>";
echo "<p>".$list['shortdesc']."</p><br style='clear:both'/>";
}
?>

Any help is much appreciated.

the $level is located in the welcome controller.

function cat($id){

    $cat = $this->MCats->getCategory($id);
    if (!count($cat)){
        redirect('welcome/index','refresh');
    }
    $data['title'] = "Company |" .$cat['name'];

    if ($cat['parentid'] < 1){
        // show other cats
        $data['listing'] = $this->MCats->getSubCategories($id);
        $data['level'] = 1;

        }else{
        // show products
        $data['level'] = 2;
        $data['listing'] = $this->MCats->getProductsByCategory($id);
        }
        $data['category'] = $cat;
        $data['main'] = 'category';
        $data['navlist'] = $this->MCats->getCategoriesNav();
        $this->load->vars($data);
        $this->load->view('template');
}

get products by category function... This selects the products based on category_id in the products table. still no show though...

 function getProductsByCategory($catid){
    $data = array();
    $this->db->select('id,name,shortdesc,thumbnail');
    $this->db->where('category_id',$catid);
    $this->db->where('status','active');
    $Q = $this->db->get('products');
    if ($Q->num_rows() > 0){
        foreach ($Q->result_array() as $row){
            $data[] = $row;
        }
    }
    $Q->free_result();
    return $data;
}

Okei. Category doesn't have subcategories, but does it have products linked to it? Does your database design allow it? — Eugene
yes i believe so... two tables categories products. categories has id, name, parent id. the sub cats are linked by parentid. products have category_id to link to each category but when i try set cat id to a cat rather than a sub cat no products show. — Jon
So every subcategory is category which has parent_id set. Then before displaying categories in navigation I asume you should display only those which have products or whom subcategories have products. — Eugene
my navigation has 5 main cats, when clicked there is a list of subcats follwed by product pages. However, on my cats with no subcats there are no products shown at all. I need some kind of a work around to display products in my cats with no subcats — Jon

Eugene Eugene · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-22T11:21:43

Try doing following. First you check in database, does requested category have products. Then check does it have subcategories. If sencond is false, then choose first and display products linked to main category.

If main category has no products, but it does have subcategories and the do have products, then it work as described in your code.

If main category has no products and no subcategories, then there is no point in displaying it at all.

Category.php - products show in subcats but not in categories if it has no subcategories

2 Answers