Hi David,
I'm looking at trying to create a new mapping function, much like product mapping, for mapping product features, colours etc. I would really like to do this all in one table rather than having a separate table for each property. I'm just not sure the best way of nesting all this information and then accessing it/changing it etc.
e.g. I'd like a master table which I could then add a property to, say 'colours' and then for that attribute, add various mappings, such as 'OR', 'OG', 'ORA' = Orange. Then another property in the same table for say, fuel type, and then 'GA', 'GS' = Gas etc.
Is this possible or would I really need to create a new table for each property? I just think it would be a lot neater and easy to manage in a single table if at all possible.
Cheers.
Keeop
Hi David,
Yeah, sort of. I'm not 100% sure how to play it at the moment as to either have separate products for each colour or have one product and then list the available colours separately. What is also an option is to then be able to search on these attributes which is another world of pain! What I'd probably do, once I have some arrays of attributes, is to scan the product details on import and put any of these matching attributes in to a new field which I can then pull out for searches etc. Maybe use the same sort of idea and dump it all in some form of delimited text field like 'colours:white;black;silver'-'fuel:gas;electricity' etc. The first part is, though, to standardise the attributes, which is where the mapping would come in. Say there are a couple of products 'DT001-BL' and 'DT001-WH'. I could then map the 'BL' to black and the 'WH' to white etc.
I've done something similar before for mobile phones but this is much more complicated as there are more than just colours to deal with. Maybe this is something you've thought of before so have an idea of the best way to proceed?
Cheers.
Keeop
Hi Keeop,
How do you intend the mappings to be applied at import time - that's key I think as to the most efficient storage option? For example, if there is an array of colours, is the objective to create a product name in each colour? So let's say your product feeds only ever refer to "Widget" - you want to be able to specify different coloured Widgets (that all merchants would be likely to sell) and create "Red Widget", "Blue Widget" etc. as unique products on your site?
Cheers,
David.
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