Filtering with multiple values - fix yet?

[trickywiki]

Hello,

I've been looking at the forums and seen a few unresolved threads on this topic but they're a couple of years old now. I was wondering if there was a solution for this yet?

I'd really like to get filtering up on the website but all my products have multiple values for the same variable, for example: I'm selling plants, a variable would be "Planting Position", options are: "Full Sun", "Partial Shade" or "Full Shade".

Some plants can be in two or more of these options. I'd like to be able to have Planting Positions with just the 3 options in the list, ticking "Full Sun" will show all plants with this even is they can also be "Partial Shade" (I'm aware I could set up lots of options like: "Full Sun & Partial Shade", "Partial Shade & Full Shade" but this becomes very messy and confusing for customers).

I've tried using separtors like commas, semi-colons, OR, AND, on the variable Planting Postion but this isn't working.

Hope this makes sense and more so I hope there's a fix!

Cheers.

[peblaco]

The closest fix was a solution graphicz used, see Big filtering issue - cannot have a product in two or more filtered sections .

[graphicz]

Thanks Louise

Create three variables - Design, Library, variables, right click on product, new variable.

Make it look like this:



Don't forget to tick Searchable.

Select true or false in each product

Make three sections like this:



In the following test site there are three plants which are real products and the three sun/shade criteria sections which are populated by filtering.

You could add blockifs to the product layout to display which of the three criteria the plant is in.

<h4>Planting position</h4>
		<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22Full%20Sun%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20true">
	<p>Full Sun</p>
		</actinic:block>
		<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22Partial%20Shade%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20true">
	<p>Partial Shade</p>
		</actinic:block>
		<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22Full%20Shade%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20true">
	<p>Full shade</p>
		</actinic:block>

You just select true or false for each plant and this way one plant can appear in two filtered sections:
http://www.graphicz.org/skeleton-new...og/Plants.html

[graphicz]

Ps

There's a little alchemy involved in filtering. You have to select the home page in content tree and switch to design view and back to 'set' the filtering and it is best if the preview is not displayed in content tree. You may need to do things a couple of times and close and reopen before it 'sets'!

[trickywiki]

Hello,

Thanks for your thourough reply! It's much appriciated!

However.... it's not ideal for what I was hoping to get from filtering. I'm hoping to be able to achieve filtering in the sidebar, rather than in the Mega Menu, which looks like the below image.

I already have a fairly crude version of different sections for plant properties using product duplicates.

Cheers.

[graphicz]

This is how to do it:

[peblaco]

Filtering multiple values - Text variables method

One method for filtering multiple values is to use Text variables as you can create several variables for different values and leave them empty if required, whereas True / False and List of Choices only allow one choice and no option to leave empty. You have to type values correctly, a difference in spelling will create a new option and it could take longer to manage.

[graphicz]

Louise drew my attention to one I prepared earlier which has the same issue as the planting position thing.

This time it was solved by using product components, attributes and choices;

http://www.musictoyourears.co.uk/cgi...&Action=Search