displaying similar products

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Hi

This is what i have: a shop selling clothes. Now, ive setup a customvar called TYPE so that I can discribe the item, eg TYPE=tshirt.

On this basis, I thought that when a product was displayed, at the foot of the page a 'result-type' list could show similar products based on the customvar TYPE.

Ive thought about a hidden search form in Act_Productbody.html and paste in part of Act_ResultsTemplate.html into Act_Productline.html.

Im hoping that someone more clever has a better idea.

All the best

J

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i tried to slip a hidden search in Act_sectionline.html and paste parts of Act_resultstemplate into act_productline - but halfway through i realised that wouldnt work.

this might be a better explanation of what i want to do:

what im trying to do (act bus v6.12) is create a set of thumbnails to appear at the bottom of the 'act_productline.html' that show similar items to the ones on that page via a CUSTOMVAR:TYPE. The senerio is a clothes shop with one product on each subsection (in accordance with adv user guide 'show as thumbnails') - so if its a tshirt, i want other tshirts (with TYPE=tshirt) thumbnailed underneath as 'alternatives' or 'similar items'.

cheers

j

[NormanRouxel]

I don't think this can be done in any automatic way except through duplicating (and renaming) the search Perl scripts and heavily customising these new versions to be called from a product line (via server side includes - assuming your server allows these) and thus return all those other products matching the type Customvar. That's a huge and risky job.

Alternatively the best you couold easily manage is to hard code a few "Similar Product" images and links into your product descriptions. That's trivial to do but a nightmare to maintain as new product come in and old one discontinue.

Norman

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thanks for your 'perl's of wisdom, norman (pun intended)

if you're saying its a 'huge' job - im not going to attempt it - but if you ever patch similar (again, pun intended) - i'll be first to buy a copy!

im going to try and hide a search based on the same customvar:TYPE on a button named 'show similar' to create a search result in a frame below the product.... maybe....

=)

cheers

all the best

justin