parent categories listed horizontally, ONLY sub-cats of the parent listed on the left...?

[Tabula_Rasa]

I'm trying to modify osCommerce to adhere to a design developed by a designer unfamiliar with application. For the most part, everything is going well, but I'm stuck with one design feature that, for some reason, I can't wrap my head around for a solution.

 

Problem: The 3 parent categories are listed at the top of the site, horizontally. Based on the parent category that's "active," Only the sub- and sub-sub- categories for THAT parent are listed on the left.

 

Complications:

(1) I've stripped Tablele tags from osC and made the site tableless without using templates. The closest contribution for category boxes at ALL was UL_Categories, which created nested unordered lists.

(2) I'm using Ultimate SEO URL's, complicating my ability to just add a $_GET parameter to say what the parent is.

(3) I'm assuming, in application_top.php, that the solution is to traverse the tree upward to discover what the 0 parent category is, then based on that, list the sub-categories... starting a new nested UL when a sub-category, itself, has sub-categories.

(4 - bonus) Since that's a lot of query calls for a category box, if there's a way to cache the 3 types of boxes... ;)

 

I'd love some help on this. At LEAST pointing me to the method of determining the root parent for any given product_info.php or sub-category...

 

Thanks!!

[burt]

$parent_category = (isset($cPath_array) && (sizeof($cPath_array) > 1)) ? (int)$cPath_array[sizeof($cPath_array) - 2] : (int)$current_category_id ;

echo $parent_category;

 

That would work on pages that use the $cPath_array

[Tabula_Rasa]

$parent_category = (isset($cPath_array) && (sizeof($cPath_array) > 1)) ? (int)$cPath_array[sizeof($cPath_array) - 2] : (int)$current_category_id ;

echo $parent_category;

 

That would work on pages that use the $cPath_array

 

I came out with something similar (haven't added the isset stuff, yet, but...):

 

$cPath_array[0]

[burt]

$cPath_array[0] gets the first value of the cPath array.

 

If you therefore have this (example):

 

cPath=1_2_3

 

Your [0] = 1 (the parent of 2, and the grandparent of 3)

My code = 2 (the parent of 3)

 

and if you had this:

 

cPath=1_2_3_4

 

Your [0] = 1 (the parent of 2, and the grandparent of 3, great-grandparent of 4)

My code = 3 (the parent of 4)

 

Anyway, you can play with whatever code you like to get the result desired.

[ashdeini]

great code burt... thanks

 

However when i use this code it spits out the id number of the category.. is there a way to modify your code to return the NAME of the category? I would really appreciate it! sorry for my lack of coding knowledge I've been trying to modify your code but cant get it