Custom Product Search - YMM

I need to implement a custom search for YMM (year make model). There are, of course, several interfaces I could dream up to accomplish the task, however I will describe what I believe to be the easiest.

Prerequisites:
1. I have all of my products categorized and imported into my store (hikashop online store, that is).
2. I have all of my YMM data in a separate table in my database listed by product_code (SKU).

I would like to build a simple search form, with year, make, model. That form would request/pull the list of SKU's from my YMM data that match. I would then like to pass my list of SKU's to the hikashop product list page for display.

Please advise best course of action or alternatives to accomplish this task.

Nicolas,

Thank you for your prompt responses. I have spent a few hours going over
different combinations of the example/solution you provided. However, I am
dealing with over 179,000 YMM/Product permutations, the data are too large
to use in the custom field format you suggested as well as too difficult to
maintain over the long term. I have to revert to a traditional YMM search
model.
The YMM search model needs to be a two part procedure.
1. Fetch the part numbers that match on YMM
2. Pull the product list from eCommerce system from YMM search results.
My design pattern would be thus: I create a module that does a YMM search
against my independent YMM/Product list.
Pass my search results containing Part Numbers to a Hikashops product filter
or product search module to build my final product list page.

Max

Hi,

Then, in that case, you can create a hikashop plugin implementing the
onBeforeProductListingLoad(&$filters) event:
www.hikashop.com/en/support/documentatio...reProductListingLoad

That way you will be able to dynamically generate the conditions in
the products listing query based on your search results (coming from
the $_GET, or the $_SESSION for example).

Best regards,
Nicolas

I've hit a brick wall and need some more advise. The thing holding me back is my limited experience developing in Joomla! I'm not sure where I include the onBeforeProductList method with my search results to create my Hikashop product listing. Do I need to send my search results to com_hikashop, do I need to create a menu-item associated to my root category and drop a product list module in there that loads a plugin with my modified filters? This is where I am grasping.

I've created my search module, under the "search" group; I've written my onSearch method in my search plugin, and return my list of part numbers based on the YMM selection;

My structure looks like this:

modules/mod_ymm_search
modules/tmpl/default.php -- builds my ymm search form
modules/helper.php -- gets my list of years makes and models for select boxes
modules/mod_ymm_search.php
modules/mod_ymm_search.xml

plugins/search/ymmSearch/ymmSearch.php -- has my custom onSearch method to pull part numbers by year make model.
plugins/search/ymmSearch/ymmSearch.xml

Right now, in my module, the search form action is set to:
index.php?option=com_hika&view=listing

There is a configurable parameter in my module for Itemid, that is not used at the moment.

My search plugin creates a record set modeled after the Hikashop search and the core Joomla! search plugins ( Anticipate having to modify this once I get my product list working, I suspect I'll have to do a left join on the products table to get the hikashop_products product_id.):

//Return the search results in an array
        foreach ($results as $row) {
            $rows[] = (object) array(
                'href' => 'index.php?option=com_hikashop&view=listing&part_number=' . $row->part_number,
                'title' => $row->part_number,
                'browsernav' => 1,
                // 'section' => 'searchplgSearchCoreYmmSearch',
                'created' => NULL
                );
        }

        return $rows;

Thank you Nicolas,

I get what you meant now by HS plugin instead, I appreciate your patience and time answering my questions regarding the mod/plugin. It is essentially working now, my YMM search is returning exactly the results I expect in a product listing. After going through the motions of learning the Joomla! search plugin, instituting the hikashop plugin was a breeze.

I have some front-end tweaking to do in my module to make the YMM search a bit more intelligent (ajaxy select/option creation based on valid YMM combinations) I expect to have that nailed down shortly.

One of the interesting issues I still need to address, however, is scenarios when YMM searches return no products matching the request (eg. there was never a "1937 Toyota La Baron", or the manufacture doesn't supply a product for a 2010 Ford Fiesta). What do you recommend I do to override the onBefore* method when no products are return in my initial YMM search?

Right now I catch the post request in the onBeforeProductListingLoad, run my query joined against my YMM data table and do a "product_id IN (...)" on my result set.

For now, do avoid any obtuse PHP notice/warnings, I have caught the empty result set in an if/else; if my results are empty I added a condition to the filter that I know will always return an empty result set, instead. I get a very nice blank page, with out any of the obnoxious PHP warnings or any indication to the user... that the results they searched for were invalid.

Great! Thanks just what I was looking for.

OK... last thing I thinks.

My results are coming up perfect now. Invalid results are messaging - except I get a duplicate message, that's a template issue our designer will take care of I think.

I'm getting some odd display issues now however. I think they are related to my plugin overriding params needed on the product listing page. Things like the pagination are missing when my final product listing is rendered sometimes. Default thumbnail size isn't loading properly. The bread crumbs are missing as well. Some of these are perhaps template issues some could be configuration/programming related?

I am calling a constructor:

public function __construct(&$subject, $config) {
        $this->loadLanguage('plg_search_hikashop_products');
        $this->loadLanguage('plg_search_hikashop_products_override');

        parent::__construct($subject, $config);
        if (!isset($this->params)) {
            $plugin = & JPluginHelper::getPlugin('hikashop');
            jimport('joomla.html.parameter');
            $this->params = new JParameter($plugin->params);
        }
        
    }

Nicolas,
Can you point me at the documentation to tell me what data and format I need to save the session data as/is.

I am certain the session has started already within the joomla framework, so adding what I need to the super global $_SESSION isn't an issue... just the format and content necessary for Hikashop.

Do you suggest I set the session data in the module after form submit or in the plugin when I test for the super global $_POST elements from my YMM search?

Thank you in advance.

Max

in the hikashop "namespace," under product listings, what does hikashop use to manage pagination? all i did was add a sub-plugin under the hikashop plugin. plugins/hikashop/my_ymm_plugin/my_ymm_plugin.php

then in my module, my form action is "index.php?option=com_hikashop&view=product&layout=listing"

as my plugin is under the hikashop namespace, overriding the onbeforeproduct... method the initial load is fine ... all the other pagination elements on the page though arent rendered with my initial filters as their base criteria for limits and offsets.. how do i pass my initial filters from the plugin onBeforeProductListLoad to the pagination in the view... i'm obviously missing a trivial step after my plugin onbeforeproductlistingload happens... do i have to override onbefore to look for my filters in the session too? not just _POST? did i just have an epiphany?

after my plugin feeds the product listing with product_id's in the $filter property... the hikashop product listing is rendered to the menu item as declared. there is some triggering here that i haven't fully grasped, because i have my itemid hidden input element in the module form that points to my "hidden" menu item presumably, reflected in the URI "index.php?option=com_hikashop&view=product&layout=listing&Itemid=xxx"

im not as comfortable w/ joomla routing as i should be perhaps... but i think i get most of whats going on.

from my module, i post the ymm search criteria, thats when my plugin steps in and does all the processing to pull up the product id list....in the onbefore* method its here that i presumed i needed to add in the handling for the hikashop product listing pagination.... do i have the whole business logic wrong? have i simply gotten lucky in my initial plugin rendering of my product list from the ymm search?

plugins/hikashop/ymm_search/ymm_search.php & ymm_search.xml

ymm_search.php has the onbeforeproductlistingload method. thats where i checked for my ymm module super global post variables....then i modified the hikashop product search plugin query to pull my product list and pushed my "product_id IN (...)" entry to the referenced $filters array on the onbefore* method.

i'm missing totally and completely how to keep that information for the pagination to work...once modified $filters are passed to the product list menu item.

pagination is using javascript onclick and event handling with a .value=x to modify the query offset/limit... so i need to evaluate the get/post pasted in that event to calculate the limit offset needed with w/my initial filters which i will now store in session...

$_SESSION['YMM'] = '..., product_id IN(...) OFFSET 0 LIMIT 20'

if isset($_SESSION('YMM')) {
 $filters[] = $_SESSION['YMM']
}

Ok, I added it as described:

if ((empty($post->search_make) || empty($post->search_model) || empty($post->search_year))) {
            if(isset($_SESSION['YMM']) && !empty($_SESSION['YMM'])){
                $filters[] = 'a.product_id IN (' . implode(',', $_SESSION['YMM']) . ')';
            }

            $filters = $filters;
        } else {
           // DO MY YMM SEARCH LOOK UP AND ADD TO $filter MY YMM SEARCH RESULTS
        }

i cheated... i checked the filters array for the entry "a.category_id IN (2)" (that's my root products category... its only loaded by YMM search.)

If it's not in the $filters then I unset my session variable YMM.

I have a new issue... that has propagated itself when we ported the site to our development server. My localhost instance of the site uses the same database as the dev server as a side note. However, some of the results aren't rendering correctly on the dev server.

When I search 2010, Chevy, Cobalt for All products (category 2)... both sites return 34 products.

When I refine the same YMM search to look for a different category, my localhost results return correct. Render the refined result set. When I run the same refined search on the dev server the filters array matches but the products aren't rendered.

I suspect it may be a short tags issue or something like that in the server config but I need to trace the exact issue... any ideas?

EDIT:::: It was cache issue. Cleared cache from administrator and all is good now.