category browser

[RyOn]

Hi
how would i go about making a category browser that works like as follows:

start off by clicking on a general topic option, eg. computers.

the site that follows will allow you to refine your search further, but also show you all the "products" within that broad catagory.

refining you search to say eg. 'monitors' will give you more options to refine your search further, but also show you all the "products" within that refined category.

you can then refine your search to eg. LCD and CRT monitor, and view the "products" within the very refined category

a really good example and pretty much where i got the idea from is trademe.co.nz

my site i am creating is made up of .php pages. could you please advise me on how i would do this, and hopefully with a bit of detail as i really have no idea how i would do this?

Thanx guys

[leonid]

How many product items do you expect in the top most category?
10s 100s 1000s ?

Are you going to implement paging if the number of items is very high?

[RyOn]

well right now i have about 10
but i would say in the slightly longer term, off the top of my head there would probably be no more 100 "products" in total, but then who knows for the very long term.
and I'm happy to have multiple pages of "products" under a category, eg. showing 10 products per page, aka yes to implementing paging.

i do not indeed to have nearly as much category options as the trademe site, it was just the perfect example but on a larger scale.

other ideas are welcome

[RyOn]

*i do not intend

[leonid]

If you are going to implement paging anyway, then I think the category refinement logic should be on the server. In other words, I don't think it makes sense to implement it using javascript. You'll need to build a category tree (each node must have a unique id and a label). Then you can tag each of your products with those cat_id's from the tree.

[vipdistinct]

If you don't have to many you could just create the folders and web pages you're self other wise a PHP script with MySQL would work wonders.

[RyOn]

Yea i had an idea today about using .php.
It would work as follows
E.G.
the broad category of computers would php to monitors + other categories.

and monitors would php to LCD and to CRT

and LCD would php to the individual "products" (so would CRT)

meaning that if you were in the computer category you would have be viewing all "products" under that category as everything would be php eventually.

then if you were in the LCD category you would only see the LCD "products" as only the "products" are being php'd

does that make sense?
and sound like a good idea?

haven't had the time to put it into practice just yet but think i will try it out tomorrow.