Any way to insert Catalog into a page? Perhaps using Panels? | Ubercart

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Mon, 08/24/2009 - 22:32

mustardman

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The idea is I want the front page to have some stuff at the top and then the catalog in the middle and then some other stuff at the bottom. Just like a lot of e-commerce sites tend to do. Blocks does not accomplish what I want to do unless uc catalog (with images and grid) could be set as a block.

Seems Panels could do this for me but going through it I seem to be hitting a dead end. I'm not a coder but seems that panels needs a node to be able to insert it into a pane and I guess the UC Catalog page is not a node?

I kind of went through something like this before. Ended up determining I needed to create my own catalog with Views but then I don't get a lot of the cool features like sub categories, product count and some other things. Is there a step by step somewhere for creating a catalog from scratch with all the features of UC catalog by using Views?

Or perhaps I am missing something and there is in fact a way to insert UC Catalog into a Panels pane?

Or maybe some way to run uc catalog though views and then to Panels???

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 00:03

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harrisben

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Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a page? Perhaps using Panels

If you install the uc_views module (http://drupal.org/project/uc_views) you can indeed use views to generate the catalog and then insert into a panel just like you want. I've never actually done this myself though so I wouldn't have the foggiest about how to use panels.

Btw, if you use attributes you're going to have a problem displaying them with views.

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 01:06

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adamo

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Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a page? Perhaps using Panels

Check out Views, Gridview style. Create a view showing the catalog data the way you want. Then you can place that view inside a Panel in amongst any other content you want. You might also want to check out the Ubercart Views module.

If you want to create your own catalog with Views, check out Taxonomy Menu. You can use it to generate a menu from your catalog vocab just like UC Catalog does, with sub categories, node count, and other options. Then just enable the default taxonomy view, and edit to your taste. Or, override the taxonomy path with Panels instead, and embed your view in a panel with other content.

You can create views of your catalog whether you use UC Catalog or not, and you can put any view into a panel (and pretty much anything else).

Oh yeah, IMPORTANT: If you are going to uninstall UC Catalog at any point, do so before you get your catalog built, and back up everything before you do it just in case. It will wipe whatever vocabulary the Catalog is associated with. I can't remember if there were other side effects.

Wed, 09/09/2009 - 17:00

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mustardman

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Re: Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a page? Perhaps using Pa

I have not found a way to create a view of uc_catalog? You can do all kinds of stuff with the uc_catalog block within the Drupal framework but that is just a list and not an Image/links/grid catalog. If it is in fact possible to create a view of the Image/Grid uc_catalog I would be VERY interested to know what the trick is because I can't figure it out and believe me I have tried.

uc_views does not allow you to do this either. It is just a collection of pre-made templates for displaying Ubercart nodes in various ways. None of those templates comes close to doing what uc_catalog does.

The overriding problem seems to be that uc_catalog built within the ubercart framework and is not really exposed to the Drupal framework other than to just display a static page.

Wed, 09/09/2009 - 18:14

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adamo

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Re: Re: Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a page? Perhaps usin

You can use Views do display pretty much any kind of content pretty much any way you want.

For example:
-Create a view.
-Set style to grid.
-Add fields for node title and image.
-Add "is product" and "published" filters.
-Add argument "taxonomy term id with depth".

This gives you a basic grid view of your products... There are a lot of other options you can play around with.

Then you can add a Page display, and set whatever you want for the menu item and path if this is to be in addition to the UC catalog. You can also override UC catalog with your view by specifying the same path as UC catalog for your view.

Using Panels as well will give you even more options for displaying your data.

Wed, 09/09/2009 - 18:21

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stephthegeek

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a page? Perhaps

A common piece I hear people trying to figure out is for displaying the grid of category images like those at /catalog. adamo has some good tips above but for the category piece, you just need the Taxonomy Image module and create a taxonomy type view displaying the term image.

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Wed, 09/09/2009 - 18:24

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adamo

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a page? Perh

Good tip. Then if you want you can use Panels to display the subcategories and products of a category on the same page.

Wed, 09/09/2009 - 22:11

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mustardman

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a page? Perh

That is what I am trying to do yes. I have already tried to use views to create my own catalog totally separated from uc_catalog. I can do the basic stuff like hyperlinked images in a grid no problem. Piece of cake in Views. It is some of the nifty little things that uc_catalog does VERY well that I cannot do. Like showing the links to subcatalogs under the main catalog and being able to go more than one layer down in subcatalogs. Like showing the quantities of products on the link of the catalog image. Just cannot do a lot of the little refinements that way in views and to me the refinements are the secret sauce of uc_catalog.

At least a mere mortal like me can't do it. Perhaps a Views guru could manage something close with some custom code. I just couldn't get all the way there using the Views admin interface. Believe me I tried for days and days I tried. Learned a LOT about views in the process but also learned a lot about the limitations. There was always some limitation and the more complicated it got to try get closer the more I always reached the same conclusion. That it would be nice to be able to just use uc_catalog and be done with it rather than trying to re-invent the wheel.

Seems the most logical (and unlikely to happen) thing is a separate ubercart catalog module that works within the Drupal module Framework rather than within the Ubercart framework.

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 01:37

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stephthegeek

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a page?

I think you want a view with arguments using the summary option (check out the default "archive" view that comes with Views) to get it to show counts for either a list in the sidebar or in a block at the top of the catalog.

There's also:
http://drupal.org/project/views_groupby
http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_menu
http://drupal.org/project/vocabindex

But I agree, it will be nice when more of this is Views-native, say if UC or uc_views provides these kinds of defaults out of the box, geared towards Ubercart's needs.

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Thu, 09/10/2009 - 02:49

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mustardman

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a pag

Thanks for the links. views_groupby looks interesting. Never ran across that before. I've messed around with the other ones but simply cannot create that same secret sauce that uc_catalog offers. Remember I am trying to do all this with images AND text links AND grid patterns with multiple subcategories. Just cannot do it the way uc_catalog does. You can do one or maybe kinda sorta 2 but never all and never quite as well as uc_catalog. I am not just splitting hairs either. uc_catalog does what I need quite well. A custom made views catalog is not even a distant second because I can't get all the main features of uc_catalog.

I have looked through hundreds of modules and code snippets out there. BELIEVE me I have tried!

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 11:01

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JohnM

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Any way to insert Catalog into a

You say you got the links, no problem -- how did you do that? I can get links to the individual products, but not to the different categories. I figure there's some argument I'm missing that I could put in to view...I just don't know the argument.

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 13:10

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adamo

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@mustardman: You can do

@mustardman:
You can do everything UC Catalog does (and a lot more) using a combination of Views, Panels, and some other modules like Taxonomy Menu and Taxonomy Image and/or NAT and others. It is definitely a lot more complicated and time consuming to set up, but you can make it any way you want it. If UC Catalog already does what you want, why do you want to create a Views based catalog?

@JohnM:
One way of doing this is to create a taxonomy based view of your categories and then a node based view of your products. Then you create a single column Panel Page with content sections for the term title/description, subcategories view, and products view. Then you either set the path to override the UC Catalog path, or you get rid of UC Catalog and use Taxonomy Menu to build your menu and then for your Panel path you override the taxonomy path.

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 14:31

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mustardman

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Re: @mustardman: You can do

Adamo, I will have to take your word for it that it is possible to do everything uc_catalog does using standard Drupal modules. I guess it just got too complicated for me to accomplish. I have seen this sort of question come up numerous times so I was hoping someone already did it and had the recipe.

When I am feeling particularly self abusive I will take another stab at it. If successful I'll provide details.

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 15:34

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JohnM

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Re: Re: @mustardman: You can do

Adamo, I created a way to display to catalog using taxonomy. Then, in Views there is a place an option to "rewrite the output of this field". What I'm wondering is if there is a way to put in an argument there so it links to the catalog pages. so the link would be "/catalog/$arg" are something like that. It sure seems like that would be possible.

Either way, I'll still try out what you are talking about...and I very much appreciate your feedback and help!

Fri, 09/11/2009 - 11:34

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adamo

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Re: Re: Re: @mustardman: You can do

@mustardman: If you can tell me what you are trying to accomplish, I might be able to help you get there. But I don't see the point of trying to create something new using Views, Panels, and other modules if UC Catalog already does what you want. If you need something that UC Catalog doesn't offer, then start by creating that, and then the little features that you need from UC Catalog. Don't expect to get a list of simple instructions that's going to immediately give you everything you want. If you want flexibility you have to take the complexity that comes with it.

@JohnM:
Is your view displaying nodes or taxonomy terms? Are you trying to create links to nodes or taxonomy terms? You can rewrite the link to point to anywhere so yes it is possible, absolutely, but I still don't understand exactly what you're trying to do.

Wed, 09/16/2009 - 08:49

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JohnM

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Re: Re: Re: Re: @mustardman: You can do

Thanks for writing back about this.

I want to create links to taxonomy terms so that I can show a group of products when you click on a main product. As an example, I'm selling hats.

First, I want to be able to display the main category for each type of hat in a grid format. Then you click on one of those and you see a grid of the hats available in that type. Then you click one off those and you see information about that particular hat.

I really don't think I'm trying to do anything much different than 90% of shopping carts I've seen...so I figure I'm just totally missing the boat on something.

Thanks!

Thu, 09/17/2009 - 09:42

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adamo

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: @mustardman: You can do

This should be easy enough. Create a Hats taxonomy term in your Catalog vocab. Then create child terms of Hats for each type of hat. Then create all of your hat products, and assign them the appropriate hat type taxonomy terms.

Fri, 09/11/2009 - 12:18

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thill

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Here is something that might help you guys out

This is an article with views import code for creating a replica of the catalog module in views. This also shows how to place these views on the normal taxonomy pages to avoid duplicate content, and to solve the issue of clicking on a term taking you to the wrong page.

http://www.commerceguys.com/resources/articles/123

Sat, 09/12/2009 - 14:19

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mustardman

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Thanks thrill, That link

Thanks thrill,

That link looks very interesting and something I could probably actually do without pulling all my hair out.

Adamo,

I like uc_catalog EXACTLY the way it is. Problem is that I want to add content above and below such as new products, top sellers etc. Something flexible so I can change the content or class of content. As it is uc_catalog is just a static page that is not part of the Drupal framework so you cannot put it into a block (images+links+grid) or add blocks to it or use it in Views or Panels.

Sat, 09/12/2009 - 21:55

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stephthegeek

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Re: Thanks thrill, That link

Ah, it sounds like your theme doesn't have regions above and/or below $content then. Adding a region to your theme in D6 is very easy! Then you can have your standard catalog in the middle and you can put any number of blocks (generated by Views, static, whatever) above and below.

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Sat, 09/12/2009 - 22:54

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mustardman

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Oh...Duh! I am using Aquia

Oh...Duh!

Yea your right I can insert blocks into regions above and below.

I am using Aquia Prosper which is designed for Ubercart. I guess what I wanted to do is the other way around. Insert Catalog (images+links+grid....not the text link catalog block) into a region.

Being able to insert other stuff into regions above and below using uc_views might be satisfactory for now. Making a custom catalog just seems like too much of a hassle.

Mon, 05/17/2010 - 20:42

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woshimikel

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Here's a twist, maybe you can offer a solution

We are building a site and would like to list some products that are not for sale directly in the same place (the catalog) where things that are for sale directly exist. For instance, I would like to make pages that share links to another site and have them appear in the catalog only without a price or an add to cart button, right alongside other items (of a different variety) that do have the price and add to cart button on them. Know if we can put page content inside the Catalog, basically?

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