Professional CodeIgniter

Chapter 4: Creating the Main Web Site

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Because you ’ re saving the retrieved category in a variable named $cat , you can do a quick check of

$cat[ ‘ parentid ’ ] and make the right decision. If that value is less than 1, you ’ re dealing with a

category page, so you have to list subcategories. If not, you ’ re dealing with a subcategory page, and you

must list products.

Other things to note on this page: the $data[ ’ main ’ ] variable is set to “ category. ” In just a few pages,

you ’ ll be creating this category view. As usual, you ’ re using $this - > load - > vars() to register the

$data array and make it available to all your views.

Creating New Model Functions

Now it is time to build some new functions. You ’ ll need a function to retrieve subcategories in the MCats

model first. Here ’ s one named getSubCategories() , accepting a category ID as an argument, which is

used to match records with the right parentid:

function getSubCategories($catid){

$data = array();

$this- > db- > where(‘parentid’, $catid);

$this- > db- > where(status’, ‘active’);

$this- > db- > orderby(‘name’,’asc’);

$Q = $this- > db- > get(‘categories’);

if ($Q- > num_rows() > 0){

foreach ($Q- > result_array() as $row){

$data[] = $row;

}

}

$Q- > free_result();

return $data;

}

The second function you need to create belongs in the MProducts model. This function retrieves all

available products that match a category ID. As with the getSubCategories() function, you ’ re going

to pass in a category ID and then order the result set by product name:

function getProductsByCategory($catid){

$data = array();

$this- > db- > select(‘id,name,shortdesc,thumbnail’);

$this- > db- > where(‘category_id’, $catid);

$this- > db- > where(status’, ‘active’);

$this- > db- > orderby(‘name’,’asc’);

$Q = $this- > db- > get(‘products’);

if ($Q- > num_rows() > 0){

foreach ($Q- > result_array() as $row){

$data[] = $row;

}

}

$Q- > free_result();

return $data;

}