Help with search function

[Guest]

I am in need of some guidance. I am looking to have a search on the site that would search my products via the following....

 

Drop down field 1: Year

 

Drop down field 2: Make of car < this would intern make the next field selections>

 

Drop down field 3:Model of car

 

Drop down field 4: categories...ie seats, interior, suspension...etc

 

finally taking you to the page of seats if seats are selected....of course only the seats that would fit for the selection that you requested.

 

****

 

Any info you can provide in direction to take to accomplish this is appreciated.

 

Basically you can look at http://autos.msn.com in the upper right corner of the page you will see a search function for new or used cars. I would like to achieve this similar layout. Where new or used dropdown is the year model, then the make selection creates the variable for the model selection and then continue it to include the categories i set up for interior etc.

 

Hope what i wrote is understandable. I know i repeated myself, but want to make sure that I am understood.

[enrique1]

The closest thing I could think of would be to actually construct a menu from scratch. Since I'm not a php guru I can tell you that it would be impossible to make a drop-down menu with the osCommerce default settup. take a look at my site www.latruck.com/catalog/ it is almost what you're asking but a bit different. Look at the bottom of the site.

[Guest]

The problem that i see is that the categories table in the database contains all data including subcats. I am not a mySQL guru. Personally i think that making each level of subcats into its own table would benefit this type of search.

 

I have been trolling around the database and see where things could be better. I know that the current set up is not going to be able to handle what i want. I can create the drop down menu to pull the cats, but that just pulls all cats from top level to tier 4. I guess i am left with restructuring the database to split the cats and subcats to different tables.

 

BTW nice site.

[Guest]

may i ask how you accomplished that little bit?

[toolcrazy]

enrique1

 

Your site is very nice, but two things you need to know. Anybody with 800x600 res is gonna have to scroll on the bottom and that is a big turn off.

 

And the main page takes a little too long to load. I am on dial up and I hate waiting for a page to load. I may be a little impaitent though, dial up at work and cable at home. But you may want to take a few seconds off the load time.

 

Steve

[Ajeh]

Loads great on DSL ... :D

[enrique1]

Well I took a ready made menu and I made my own changes. Let me know if you want the code so that I can send it to you.

[enrique1]

Steve, thanks for your comments. I'm fully aware that the page exceeds the 800 mark. I might move the right column boxes or just make them links somewhere else on the page.

 

As for the loading time, I don't think it's a problem. I have all the images optimized but I may get rid of some to make it load faster.

 

Thanks!

[Guest]

you have a PM.

 

Thanks

[Guest]

John,

 

Can you tell me how to move the search box to another area?

 

I am building a site that needs the search box and the manufacturer's box together ... listed next to each other... and they need to be above where the product descriptions are.

 

Thanks!

[enrique1]

You can move the search box anywhere you want by simply taking the

"require(DIR_WS_BOXES . 'search.php');" anywhere you want.

 

I'm not sure where you have your manufacturer's box but I suppose you have it in your right column. You can move the order of the boxes by rearranging the requires in the "column_left.php" file inside catalog/includes/

 

Let me know if you need further help.

[Guest]

The only box I can move is search or that's all I know how to.

 

I really don't want the whole box. I just want the search and manufacturer fields and have the name search and manufacturer in those boxes without the header, the box outline, and the text.

 

Is this possible?

[enrique1]

Look at the file in includes/boxes/search.php

 

But the easiest way to do this is to take the search form from the source in your browser.

 

For example:

<form name="quick_find" method="get" action="advanced_search_result.php"><input type="hidden" name="osCsid"><input type="text" name="keywords" size="10" maxlength="30" value="" style="width: 130px"><input type="image" src="includes/languages/english/images/buttons/button_quick_find.gif" border="0" alt="Search" title=" Search " width="47"><br>

</form>

 

For the manufacturer you must copy the code from the manufacturers.php file inside includes/boxes/

[Guest]

I'm sorry but I don't understand what you are saying.

 

There is no code like that in my advanced_search.php file or in the boxes/search.php file.

[enrique1]

No, this code came from the Source of the browser. Take a look at your front website and go to view source.

[Guest]

No I don't have this code. I checked a couple of clients and there is nothing with <form> for the search box.