Hi Stephen,

Are you talking about creating a product table in the backend of umbraco, i.e.e a dashboard control or would this be for front end users?

L

Hi Lachlann,

I'm looking for something for end users so when people visit the site they can search for a product and it will be displayed in a table format. I was going to create something to do this from scratch but was just wondering if anybody was aware of a package or something that was capable of this. I want users to search for a product i.e. a t-shirt and take the image and details from a database and populate a tables rows and columns.

Thanks,

Steve

Cheers Lachlann,

I'll give that a try.

Regards,

Steve

Hi Lachlann,

Just wondering if you would be able to help me with one or two issues. I'm planning on having around 200 products on the site, do u think it would be better to store the product images and data in a database and query it to return and display the results? Or would it be easier to use document types? Are there any advantages of either method?

This is my second site to create and my first one using umbraco, I've tried three XSLT files and eventually got them working with the help from some tutorials and other posts. I have been trying your suggestion and having been trying to modify the XSLT found here:

http://our.umbraco.org/forum/developers/xslt/11692-Simple-table-row-example-with-XSLT-templates

to get the effect I'm looking for but can't seem to get it working.

I also tried the two tutorial videos on the umbraco site for adding a search to your site, sadly they are cut short and are only two minutes long.

Perhaps you could point me in the right direction or know of an example xslt file which I could look at.

Thanks for your time,
Steve

Hi Steve,

Sure If i was doing this I would use umbraco to store the product details as nodes (with a product document type), although it might be good if you can sub divide the products into sub categories to be more managable in the backend.

To list all of your products in your table you will want to write some xslt that goes through all of the products and outputs a row in the tbale for each.

something like:

<table>
<xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/descendant::*[@isDoc and name()='product']">
    <tr>
         <td><xsl:value-of select="./productName"/></td>
         <td><xsl:value-of select="./productPrice"/></td>
     </tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>

this looks underneath the currentPage node and finds all of the products. and then loops through each one outputting a new row in the table with cells for each of the product properties.

If you download and install

http://our.umbraco.org/projects/website-utilities/xsltsearch

you could look at the xslt for this, by default it ouputs the search results in divs i think but you could edit the xslt to output in a table like above. The xslt search also has parameters so you can define the root to search from as well as the properties to return and search on.

I hope this helps let me know if you need a few more pointers.

best

Lachlann

Thanks for the response Lachlann and for the advice, its much appreciated I'll give that a try over the next few days and let you know how I get on.

Once again Thank you,

Steve

Hi Lachlann,

I've been trying to get this working again over the past few days. I got the XSLT search you suggested and it seems to be great. I also made a very basic XSLT with the code you provided which works once I add the macro to my product page it returns the products name and description.

I'm Currently trying to edit the XSLT search to get the effect I'm looking for as It already seems to have alot of the functions I require such as the search box, search button, page numbers not to mention some other nice features. I have ran into some problems.

I have a Product document type and a Products document type. My Products doc type has very simple properties: productTitle and productDescription. I have edited the XSLT search macro to include the fields I need searched such as productTitle etc.

searchFields="@nodeName,metaKeywords,metaDescription,bodyText,productTitle,productDescription"

However I can only get the link to the T-shirt page returned rather than the product and details. i.e.

Your search for T-shirt matches 2 page's
Showing results 2

1. Product 1
2. Product 2

Instead of something like

 Blue T-shirt         Red T-shirt
 Large                  Medium

I have tried editing the XSLT Search with the code you provided to try and change the way it displays however I can't seemt to get it to work. I'm not to sure were to place the code you provide in the XSLT search. Any pointers?

Thanks,
Steve

Hi Steve,

I think you should be able to look at the xslt search and find the code which is outputing all of the search results and just edit the output, I think it iterates through the results and outpus a div for each results. You would just edit this to outout a new table row.

Looking at the code, I think it is around line 326 that you will find the loop that is iterating through the resutls you would replace <div class="xsltsearch_result"> with your <tr> and you would replace the containing div <div id="xsltsearch_results"> with the <table> code.

Hope this helps

Best

Lachlann

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