Joomla Subcategories Project

[darb]

Hello everyone! Long time no talk :-).

I've recently completed work on my ArtCats 2.0 module (added support for the subcategories patches into it), which has allowed me to come back and finally finish up the subcategories patches.

Tonight I finished completing the support within com_categories in the admin area...no long will you have the problem of no categories showing when you create a new category!

A dynamic list has been integrated so now you can change the section when creating a new category and the list of parent categories to choose from will be updated at the same time! Much more convenient :-).

I've gone through the latest 1.5.9 update and double-checked all of the files and tested it on my local PC so you shouldn't have any problems with it.

More updates are planned (plus the official website for the downloads, demo, etc.) and they will be coming more often now.

Some additional things in the works are:
Frontend subcategories support
Integration with jxtended's Content Manager Component (Frontend ACL Content Editing)
Integration with Egxact's Versioning Component for Content
Breadcrumbs/SEF Router Changes

Great news Orware! Where can we find ArtCats 2.0 module? http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... 04/details Will you update this in JED? ok hope soo..

All the best!

[bidsro]

Please check page navigation and display #/page. For example: default show 20 rows per page, then try to display 50/page but i see only 25 records. Going to second page, i see only 5 records but i have 114 categories in total...

No section was selected from top dropdown

When i use filter for section:

i can see categories only for first section (alphabetical order) and not for the section i select


the only way to see categories for chosen section is to use Display: all

Joomla 1.5.9,Linux, Apache

Thank you

[orware]

I've been putting it off for a while, but I went and got this setup this morning so that everyone will know where to go and download ArtCats and the SubCats patches.

Just go to my homepage here:
http://orware.net/

And you will see the direct links right there on the homepage.

I need to get the JED updated as well, but I'll probably do that at work later on today.

[kaezr]

Just go to my homepage here:
http://orware.net/

Tested ArtCats 2.0 with subcategories ...simply awesome

just a note.. i have php 5.1 on my server: in this version htmlspecialchars(), requires only 3 params. In helper.php this function is called with a 4th param (double_encode) which was added in php 5.2.3, so i got a lot of warnings and the module didn't work.

I simply removed the param double_encode from all the calls to htmlspecialchars()... don't know if that's a good thing, but now everything works perfectly!

orware, you really did a great job, thank you very much!

[MasterAM]

Hi,

Thank you for all of the hard work, Omar!

I have noticed some conflicts with components that require categories, but not sections, such as com_contacts (Got it when trying to add a new category in this component's admin interface).

I have made the following quick&dirty changes:

\administrator\components\com_categories\admin.categories.php - 'editCategory' @ line ~525

Code: Select all

    if ($sectionid == 0 && isset($sectionid))
    {
        $sectionid = $sections[0]->value;
    }

\libraries\joomla\html\html\menu.php - JHTMLMenu::categorytreerecurse @ line ~179

Code: Select all

				$pt = $v->parent_id;
				if(isset($v->section)){
					$s	= $v->section;
				}
				$list[$id] = $v;
				$list[$id]->treename = "$indent$txt";
				$list[$id]->children = count( @$children[$id] );
				// Added check for $pt = 0 so that siblings
				// would be correct when viewing all sections
				if ($pt == 0){
					$count = 0;
					if(isset($s)){
						foreach ($children[$pt] as $top) 
						{
							if ($s == $top->section){
								$count++;
							}
						}
					}
					$siblings = $count;
				} else {
					$siblings = count( @$children[$pt] );
				}

And an edit to post some extra code, after getting an error when trying to create a menu item of the type 'category blog view':
\libraries\joomla\html\parameter\element\subcategory.php - 'JElementSubcategory::fetchElement' @ line 100
(The $category_options is set to an empty array, so it certainly has no index of $cat_item->section, which leads to a wrong index warning.)

Code: Select all

                 if (!isset($category_options[$cat_item->section]) || !is_array($category_options[$cat_item->section]))

I don't know if this won't trigger any new errors, but this is working for now.

Regards,
Alon.

[orware]

Thank you for your contribution MasterAM,

I remember running into those issues the other day, and if I'm not mistaken I fixed those as well and updated the package on the website. I'm wondering if you had gotten the updated package immediately the day I released it, and may not have gotten the updated one?

If you could download the latest one from the website again and try it out and let me know if you still experience the errors it might be helpful for me to know where this bug stands, otherwise I will have to look at it later to see if I'm still getting the error.

Next up will be frontend support for subcategories displaying!

[orware]

@kaezr

Thank you for letting me know about the htmlspecialchars issue you had in PHP 5.1.

Could you try out your changes with article titles that contain some of these special characters and let me know what the result is?

* '&' (ampersand) becomes '&'
* '"' (double quote) becomes '"' when ENT_NOQUOTES is not set.
* ''' (single quote) becomes ''' only when ENT_QUOTES is set.
* '<' (less than) becomes '<'
* '>' (greater than) becomes '>'

I can also look into doing a version check for that part of the script and make the call to htmlspecialchars without the 4th parameter for versions less than 5.2.3.

[MasterAM]

Hi Omar,

If you are referring to version 1.5.9.2 as the latest, then I am using it.
I have edited my previous post, adding some code after I had another error.
I have all errors turned on in my PHP setup, of course.

Alon.

[kaezr]

Could you try out your changes with article titles that contain some of these special characters and let me know what the result is?

* '&' (ampersand) becomes '&'
* '"' (double quote) becomes '"' when ENT_NOQUOTES is not set.
* ''' (single quote) becomes ''' only when ENT_QUOTES is set.
* '<' (less than) becomes '<'
* '>' (greater than) becomes '>'

I wrote

Code: Select all

& " ' > <

in the title of an article. The resulting HTML is

Code: Select all

& " '

less than (<) and greater than (>) do not compare in the HTML code.

all my calls to htmlspecialchars() have just the first three params

Code: Select all

$category->title, ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8'

[orware]

@MasterAM

I ended up applying only one of your fixes:
1. The first one wasn't really necessary in this case (at the beginning of that function $sectionid is declared explicitly with 0 as a starting value so it should always be set.
2. I wasn't really sure where this error came up for you but if you want to let me know I'd be happy to try it again :-).
3. I definitely noticed this error when trying to create a category blog view menu item so I applied your fix and the issue went away.

I also applied a quick fix the morning right after I released the patches (this is part of the reason why I asked if you had the latest version). I didn't change the version number since it was a really minor change, but you may want to double-check that in admin.categories.php starting on line 474 the code looks like this:

Code: Select all

if ($row->section) {
                if ($section->value == $row->section) {
                    $contentSection = $section->text;
              }

and doesn't have "$row->sectionid" which would be incorrect since Joomla's category table does not have a field named "sectionid", only "section" (sometimes I make that mistake since the content table has it named as "sectionid").

I'm going to see if I can work on some of the frontend edits right now, but I have noticed that there is going to be a slight issue for users in the frontend since a lot of template developers, such as Joomlart, may include template overrides for the frontend editing page (since it would override my changes that would be mean that the subcategories would not be shown as they are supposed to). This would mean that you would have to remove the template overrides for the edit form view from your template's html folder.

I have also been working pretty hard this week on integrating Egxact Version Control (which provides Content Versioning for Joomla articles) and jxtended's Content Manager extension which has some expanded access control capability for editing content in the frontend. Ultimately I want to combine the subcats patches with the other two and have everything work seamlessly.

Have a good night everyone!

[orware]

Updated Subcategories Patch to version 1.5.9.3
http://orware.net/joomla-projects/subca ... v1593.html

I applied MasterAM's fixes as well as added simple frontend support when editing your articles.

[bidsro]

Great job! You are one step closer (looking forward to have same option in frontend for both new and edit articles) to do something we expect for years Thank you!

[nebstar]

First: thank you very much for your subject project!

I just wanted to ask if you could add the subjects to the article manager in the administrator backend too?
On the top is a drop down list and there the subcategories are disordered...

Tank you very much in advance...

[MasterAM]

@orware

Good morning

I have taken another look at the first quick fix that I made.

\administrator\components\com_categories\admin.categories.php - 'editCategory' @ line ~525
Code:

Code: Select all

    if ($sectionid == 0 && isset($sectionid))
    {
        $sectionid = $sections[0]->value;
    }

At a first glance, it seems completely redundant (hell, even I thought so first).
If the variable equals to 0, it must be defined and the second test ('isset()') will never be tested.
Well, as the test is using '==' and not '===', PHP evaluates

Code: Select all

<uninitialized variable> == 0

as true.

The culprit, I believe, is a missing parenthesis in lines ~385-387:

Code: Select all

	
	if ($edit)
		$row->load( $cid[0] );//Alon: can be substituted by '$row->load( $id );'
		$sectionid = $row->section;

I guess those just slipped...
In this case, the row load is done in any case (even if $edit is false). If there are no sections returned (e.g, $id is 0), '$row->section' is undefined and then $sectionid gets undefined as well, despite being set before.

Another thing is, $sections is not an array, unless $section is 'com_content'.
Hence, the proper fixes are adding the parenthesis and replacing my first proposed fix by:

Code: Select all

 if ($sectionid === 0 && is_array($sections))

As per quick fix no. 2, $v->section was not defined, and that triggered an error.
I did not manage to reproduce this at the moment, but this might be due to the fact that I tested it in a site on a fresh start, so it had no sections/categories at first.
Just need to keep that in mind until it can be reproduced (BTW, I did have your updated code).

Now, just a thought... perhaps the approach towards front-end editing should be extension instead of patching (because of the wide-spread of overrides in templates)? A plugin maybe?
Do you think it is possible? I have to say I did not take the time to learn the com_content source.

Thanks again,
Alon.

[orware]

@nebstar

Thanks for the reminder! Somebody else had mentioned I had forgot about the filtering lists in the article manager before (I will probably have to make changes in the category manager as well). So I will make those fixes this afternoon after work :-).

@MasterAM

Thanks for the clarification, I probably did not notice these issues since I'm always using the sample data to start with, but I will double-check everything with a blank Joomla install this afternoon and incorporate those other fixes of yours :-).

For frontend editing I think it would be preferable to move towards using jxtended's Content Manager:
http://jxtended.com/news/13-products/75 ... sting.html

The story behind these guys is that they are mostly the main Joomla Core Developers and right now they are working on Joomla 1.6 mostly, so even though a lot of the work put into Content Manager will eventually make it into 1.6, the beta version hasn't received any updates since it was released last August.

I've recently had the need for its features and for content versioning so I am integrating Content Manager with Egxact Version Control so I could have these two needed features for the site I'm doing for the college. I've pretty much finished that integration so now I'll be doing some real-world testing with it today when I am adding content :-).

I have a link to download Content Manager right now from my site so if you do download it from there please contact me for support since I do not want to bother the jxtended developers :-).

Have a good day!

[xclusive]

* '&' (ampersand) becomes '&'
* '"' (double quote) becomes '"' when ENT_NOQUOTES is not set.
* ''' (single quote) becomes ''' only when ENT_QUOTES is set.
* '<' (less than) becomes '<'
* '>' (greater than) becomes '>'

Can anyone please help me fixing these issue? My products heading in the breadcrumb shows ''' instead of "'" (single quote). Where and how should I change ENT_QUOTES to fix this?

Thanks in advance.

[orware]

@xclusive

Could you let me know what your issue has to do with the subcategories patches please? You mentioned breadcrumbs in your post, but the subcategories patches has nothing to do with those at the moment.

If your question is unrelated to the patches, could you open up a new thread for your problem? Feel free to PM me the link and I would happy to provide some sort of response for you :-).

[orware]

Hi everyone!

There's a new release of the subcats patches out (1.5.9.4). I know Joomla 1.5.10 just got released but I haven't gone through to verify if everything is working correctly in the new version (that's next on my list of things to do) so there should be another release for it later on this week (it will be named "1.5.10.4" so that everyone will know that it should work with Joomla 1.5.10).

Check out the release info here:
http://orware.net/joomla-projects/subca ... v1594.html

I've incorporated MasterAM's fixes and finally added subcategories support to the Category filter in com_content and com_frontpage in the admin area!

[darb]

Thanks Orware!

[Welat-Kurdistan]

Hi,
first, i want to thank you very much for your solution and your hard work.
I use your patch to create subcats for my Webside.
There is a problem with subcats, when i want to display the contents of a subcat as blog.
If i click on the link to show the contens in the subcat as blog, there is no content shown. The blog shows no contents, its empty.
I use the Joomla version 1.5.10.

I hope, you understand my problem.
I thank you very much in advance.

P.S.: I'm very sorry for my bad english.

[cathy1967]

Thank you very much for this patch. It's working brilliantly.

One question, though. Will it eventually be able to show the sub-categories on the frontpage of Joomla? I have a fan-fiction site and right now, I still have to name all the categories and sub-categories some very long names in order to make the path show up on the frontend (www.cathys-basement.dk). For the frontpage, you can turn on show category and show section. Will there be an option to show sub-categories as well? Just curious.

Thanks again. You're doing an awesome job.

[cathy1967]

In reply to holmesjl's question sent to me (you didn't leave an e-mail addy, so I can't reply directly) ... nope, I don't have subcategories working at the frontend. I have simply named the categories the entire path to make them show up the way I want them to. But it is limited how much text you can add to a category name, which is why I would love to know if the sub-categories will be 'visible' from the front end at some point (e.g. section - category - sub-category) so I don't have to name any given category that's supposed to be a sub-category the entire path.

[darb]

Thank you very much for this patch. It's working brilliantly.

One question, though. Will it eventually be able to show the sub-categories on the frontpage of Joomla? I have a fan-fiction site and right now, I still have to name all the categories and sub-categories some very long names in order to make the path show up on the frontend (http://www.cathys-basement.dk). For the frontpage, you can turn on show category and show section. Will there be an option to show sub-categories as well? Just curious.

Thanks again. You're doing an awesome job.

Did you try to use subcat with the ArtCats module from Orware? does it not solve your subcategories problem or how do you mean?

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/5204/details
http://orware.net/joomla-projects/artca ... lease.html

[cathy1967]

Thank you very much for this patch. It's working brilliantly.

One question, though. Will it eventually be able to show the sub-categories on the frontpage of Joomla? I have a fan-fiction site and right now, I still have to name all the categories and sub-categories some very long names in order to make the path show up on the frontend (http://www.cathys-basement.dk). For the frontpage, you can turn on show category and show section. Will there be an option to show sub-categories as well? Just curious.

Thanks again. You're doing an awesome job.

Did you try to use subcat with the ArtCats module from Orware? does it not solve your subcategories problem or how do you mean?

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/5204/details
http://orware.net/joomla-projects/artca ... lease.html

Uhm ... nope, not really. It's not what I'm looking for. What I want is for the section/category/sub-category to be 'clickable' seperately on the frontpage when it's listed under the article's name. Right now, all I have is a section (which is turned off) and category, which I have to name impossibly long names by now because I'd like to use sub-categories (e.g. Fan-Fiction (section) - Supernatural (category) - Completed (sub-category) - story name (sub-sub-category - if there's more than one part to these stories).

I don't know if I'm explaning this right. The way I have it listed now works, but there is a limit to how much text you can enter in a category title. Using the above example, the category name at present looks like this: Supernatural - Completed - article name. I would like to have three seperate categories show up on the front page so it looks like this: Supernatural - Completed - article name. It does it nicely on the backend, but since it doesn't show up on the front page, it's not really helping me. I was just wondering if this was going to be addressed in future updates.

[darb]

Latest version Subcat 1.5.9.4

http://orware.net/joomla-projects/subca ... v1594.html

[VipArt]

Uhm ... nope, not really. It's not what I'm looking for. What I want is for the section/category/sub-category to be 'clickable' seperately on the frontpage when it's listed under the article's name. Right now, all I have is a section (which is turned off) and category, which I have to name impossibly long names by now because I'd like to use sub-categories (e.g. Fan-Fiction (section) - Supernatural (category) - Completed (sub-category) - story name (sub-sub-category - if there's more than one part to these stories).

I guess you wan to be able to click on the parent category and get all the content articles belonging to child and sub-child categories. If so - you cannot do with this patch, since then article should be assigned to multiple categories, which is not possible in this version of Joomla

[cathy1967]

Uhm ... nope, not really. It's not what I'm looking for. What I want is for the section/category/sub-category to be 'clickable' seperately on the frontpage when it's listed under the article's name. Right now, all I have is a section (which is turned off) and category, which I have to name impossibly long names by now because I'd like to use sub-categories (e.g. Fan-Fiction (section) - Supernatural (category) - Completed (sub-category) - story name (sub-sub-category - if there's more than one part to these stories).

I guess you wan to be able to click on the parent category and get all the content articles belonging to child and sub-child categories. If so - you cannot do with this patch, since then article should be assigned to multiple categories, which is not possible in this version of Joomla

Uh ... no, not that either. What I would like to be able to do is use the sub-categories created through this patch in the same way as I use sections and categories. Right now, when I name a sub-category, I have to name it section-category-sub-category in order for it to show up right on the frontpage. I don't have sections activated on the frontpage, only categories and if I don't name the sub-categories these long names, the reader has no idea which main category the story belongs to because there is no option to show categories and sub-categories. It's only the frontpage display that interests me right now.



This is how the frontpage display is set up.



This is how it looks on the frontpage.



And this is how it's named at the backend.

So, instead of having to name a sub-category Supernatural - In Progress - But Only Hope, I would like to be able to name one Supernatural and one In Progress and one But Only Hope, but still have it show up as the entire path on the frontpage.

Does that make sense?

[bidsro]

Check this extension: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... 61/details

[darb]

Check this extension: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... 61/details

For what?

[samy2000]

I guess you wan to be able to click on the parent category and get all the content articles belonging to child and sub-child categories. If so - you cannot do with this patch, since then article should be assigned to multiple categories, which is not possible in this version of Joomla

Yes this is what I would like to do VipArt! Are you still working on the patch you mentioned earlier in this thread? If so will it do this? Be very useful if you are!

Cheers, Sam.