AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

I'm new to AC7 and I'm unsure how to structure my categories and product assignments to get what my client wants. Part of what I'll need is a parent level category list that is always displayed on category or product pages. I'm pretty sure Mazhar's post (viewtopic.php?f=42&t=10741&p=45884&hili ... ges#p45884) will take care of that part.

In my Category List, I will have the following:

• Boys
  Girls

-- separator --

• Under $50
  Under $25

-- separator --

• Puzzles
  Stools

Clicking on Puzzles or Stools wil list all products associated with them.
But clicking on Boys would display a sub-category grid containing both the Puzzles and Stools sub-categories. Clicking on Boys->Puzzles would just display "boy" puzzles.

In essence, the Boys category is kind of like a keyword search which then displays the cateogies containing products with the Boys keyword.

Is this possible? If so, what would be the correct approach?

One way to accomplish this could be to make use of product templates. For example create a product template with one merchant field having two choices Boys, Girls. And then apply this template on your products and specify its value for each product. Now make your left nav contain above to keywords Boys and Girls. When some one click upon any of these keywords you can filter products for that choice by some custom query.

You can also try a second technique by putting Boys, Girls keywords in products keyword section through edit product screen and then make use of advance search functions to create some custom product listing page.

mazhar wrote:One way to accomplish this could be to make use of product templates. ... When some one click upon any of these keywords you can filter products for that choice by some custom query.

You can also try ... products keyword through edit product screen and then make use of advance search functions to create some custom product listing page.

Since I'm new to AC, where can I find info on custom queries and advance search functions? Any good reference posts you'd suggest?

Since I asked this question, I've found out my client may want something slightly different. The Boy and Girl categories may point to the same product but filter the available option values. I haven't looked into this at all yet but if you have suggestions where to start, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you for the response and all of your great posts and answers!

There is a topic about data access layer and custom queries here on WIKI
http://wiki.ablecommerce.com/index.php/ ... uilder_API
You can also search forums with keyword custom queries, you will found very helpful threads because this is discussed in various threads.