Sub-categories Tutorial

Many thanks for your help, Jason. I'll give this a go.

Chris - again - great tutorial! Each time I do this they client wants something a little different so I need a little more help.

I have the articles and categories setup and the page is working... kind of. but not in the way I need it too so before I start hacking it to pieces, I need some direction :)

I already had the articles & categories setup so I kept those names, so:

articles = physicians_wyoming
categories = specialites

I've attached my physiciansList.php page and a screenshot of what I'm trying to accomplish and then one marked "under construction" to show you what it looks like now. There will be two separate Physician pages, one listed by specialty and one as a photo/bio list but I think I know how to do that one. I just need help with the specialty list.

If at all possible, I would also like each specialty to go to a page with more information about that specialty, ie: orthopedic page.

Thank you!! Tina

Hi Tina,

If I understand correctly, you just want to organize all the physicians according to their specialty and then output them underneath each specialty heading. Is that right?

If so what you can do is create an array that arranges all the physician records according to their selected specialty. In this code example, I've had to make a couple of assumptions. First, that you have a field in the physicians_wyoming table called "specialty". I've also assumed that the value of this field is the same as the "num" field coming from the specialites table.

Assuming these things, here's what we can do. First, we loop through all the physicians, and add them to an array based on their specialty number like this:

// organize physician records into specialties
$physicanSpecialityToRecord = array();

foreach( $physicians_wyomingRecords as $physician) {
$physicanSpecialityToRecord[$physican['specialty']][] = $physician;

}

Next, we add code to output these records as we're outputting our specialty records like this: (changes in red)

<?php foreach ($specialtiesRecords as $categoryRecord): ?>
<?php echo $categoryRecord['_listItemStart'] ?>

<?php if ($categoryRecord['_isSelected']): ?><b><?php endif ?>
<a href="?category=<?php echo $categoryRecord['num'] ?>"><?php echo $categoryRecord['name'] ?></a>
<?php if ($categoryRecord['_isSelected']): ?></b><?php endif ?>

<?php echo $categoryRecord['_listItemEnd'] ?>

<?php foreach ($physicanSpecialityToRecord[$categeoryRecord['num']] as $physician): ?>

<a href="<?php echo $physician['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $physician['physician_first_name'] ?>&nbsp;<?php echo $physician['title'] ?></a><br/>

<?php endforeach ?>

<?php endforeach ?>

Hope this helps get you started.

Hi Jason,

I'm close... but not close enough - darn. ;) Yes, I would like the specialty name to display with the appropriate dr. names below each specialty - with links to their bio pages.

The field in physicians_wyoming is called "specialties" because some have more than one. To the best of my knowledge, the "num" field is the same because I set it up to get options from db / specialties / num / name (see screenshot) pic4

I changed the word "specialty" to "specialties" throughout the new code also change the typo in category.. but it's still not playing nice. I've attached my physiciansList.php page and a few screenshots.

Is it also possible to get the list to display in 2 columns? I know... I'm just getting greedy now. ;)

here's the urL:
http://www.nwsc5872139.myutilitydomain.com/physiciansList.php

THANKS!!! Tina

Hi Tina,

The code for actually outputting our list should still work, all we need to do is be able to add a physician to more than one category. In CMS Builder, multi-value lists are stored as strings separated by tab (\t) characters. We can break these strings apart to handle each value individually like this:

// organize physician records into specialties
$physicanSpecialityToRecord = array();

foreach( $physicians_wyomingRecords as $physician) {

// break selected specailties into an array
$specialties = explode("\t", trim($physican['specialties'], "\t"));

foreach ($specialties as $specialty){
$physicanSpecialityToRecord[$specialty][] = $physician;
}

}

As for breaking your list up into 2 columns, there are many different ways of accomplishing that depending on how you're designing your page. Here's an example of using two columns when displaying your content in a table:
http://www.interactivetools.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=62848#62848

Hope this helps.

I'll give that a try. THANKS!!!!

worked perfect! Thanks!!

Hi,

If you're looking to just output your basic categories without making them links, you might be looking for something like this:

<?php foreach ($specialtiesRecords as $categoryRecord): ?>

<?php echo $categoryRecord['_listItemStart'] ?>
<?php echo $categoryRecord['name'] ?>
<?php echo $categoryRecord['_listItemEnd'] ?>

<?php endforeach ?>

Hope this helps