I'm having trouble setting up my Product Tree. I have my main "Store" with 3 types of products "Type1,2,3" and each type has a few manufactures underneath. The problem is since the manufacturer name is sometime duplicated it doesn't show the correct "Type"
Store
-- Type 1
---- Manuf A
---- Manuf B
---- Manuf C
-- Type 2
---- Manuf A
---- Manuf B
---- Manuf C
-- Type 3
---- Manuf A
---- Manuf B
---- Manuf C
If I choose the bolded item when previewing the site/store, It always shows me the products under Type 1, Manuf B instead of Type 2, Manuf B.
For uCommerce 1.0.3 we only support a single mode of working with categories: Categories with unique names within a given catalog.
However, for the next version you'll have an option of turning uniqueness off and working with whatever naming scheme you wish.
The consequence is that you'll have to use a different API for retrieve categories (CommerceLibrary:GetCategoryById(int)) and you'll have to structure your product urls in such a way so that they contain the category id. A good example is the url for a particular question on StackOverflow, which does this by embedding the id of a question (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2475821/iqueryable-igrouping-how-to-work).
A little more background on category names
We wanted to make url rewriting super simple to setup with uCommerce and one of the requirements for that is we must be able to directly lookup category names based on values represented in the url, ie. the catalog and category names.
Thus it's a design decision to make category names unique per catalog. If you want a structure like the one you describe I'd suggest that you build names with structure in them. So your Type 1, Manuf B would be have the name type1-manufB and your type2 would be called type2-manufB.
I'm surprised that you didn't get an error message when you entered a duplicate name in the Admin interface when you created the second Type 1 category.
In the solution I'm working on, I've chosen to ensure unique category names the way Søren suggest: "Type 1 - Manuf B".
The name isn't that important anyways, it is only used for URL's. And you only need to set it up once. Displayname for the category is used for the actual category navigation (I think, I've created my own from scratch).
Hope my input on the matter can help you, otherwise do let me know!
Catalog, duplicate categories
I'm having trouble setting up my Product Tree. I have my main "Store" with 3 types of products "Type1,2,3" and each type has a few manufactures underneath. The problem is since the manufacturer name is sometime duplicated it doesn't show the correct "Type"
Store
-- Type 1
---- Manuf A
---- Manuf B
---- Manuf C
-- Type 2
---- Manuf A
---- Manuf B
---- Manuf C
-- Type 3
---- Manuf A
---- Manuf B
---- Manuf C
If I choose the bolded item when previewing the site/store, It always shows me the products under Type 1, Manuf B instead of Type 2, Manuf B.
For uCommerce 1.0.3 we only support a single mode of working with categories: Categories with unique names within a given catalog.
However, for the next version you'll have an option of turning uniqueness off and working with whatever naming scheme you wish.
The consequence is that you'll have to use a different API for retrieve categories (CommerceLibrary:GetCategoryById(int)) and you'll have to structure your product urls in such a way so that they contain the category id. A good example is the url for a particular question on StackOverflow, which does this by embedding the id of a question (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2475821/iqueryable-igrouping-how-to-work).
A little more background on category names
We wanted to make url rewriting super simple to setup with uCommerce and one of the requirements for that is we must be able to directly lookup category names based on values represented in the url, ie. the catalog and category names.
Thus it's a design decision to make category names unique per catalog. If you want a structure like the one you describe I'd suggest that you build names with structure in them. So your Type 1, Manuf B would be have the name type1-manufB and your type2 would be called type2-manufB.
I'm surprised that you didn't get an error message when you entered a duplicate name in the Admin interface when you created the second Type 1 category.
Which version of uCommerce are you running?
In the solution I'm working on, I've chosen to ensure unique category names the way Søren suggest: "Type 1 - Manuf B".
The name isn't that important anyways, it is only used for URL's. And you only need to set it up once. Displayname for the category is used for the actual category navigation (I think, I've created my own from scratch).
Hope my input on the matter can help you, otherwise do let me know!
/SoerenS
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