Can I use PerchSystem::set_vars() with perch_shop_custom?

Yes that works

Well that is bizarre, it is displaying the data now but I also have a new problem in that it is loading all products for each category (i.e. not just all products for that category or the 4 products required but all products in the system).

Back to the drawing board on that now :(

Now I need help again - I have just commented out the PerchSystem::set_vars() and perch_shop_custom() sections and just echo'd out the product name and that works as it should but as soon as I allocate the product data to PerchSystem::set_vars() and load the data through the template I get the problem of all products as mentioned above.

Any ideas?

It really looks the same as before.

foreach ($products as $product) {
    PerchSystem::set_vars(array(
        'productSlug' => $product['productSlug'],
        'productImage' => $product['productImage'],
        'productTitle' => $product['productTitle'],
        'shortTitle' => $product['shortTitle'],
        'productPrice' => $product['productPrice']
    ));

    perch_shop_custom(array(
        'template'=>'home_page_listing.html'
    ));

    $product_ids[] = $product['productID'];
}

And the template:

<li>
    <a href="/agility-equipment/<perch:shop id="productSlug" />" rel="bookmark">
        <perch:if exists="productImage">
            <img src="<perch:shop id="productImage" type="image" width="136" bucket="shop-images" />" alt="<perch:shop id="productTitle" />" />
        </perch:if>
        <h3>
            <perch:if exists="shortTitle">
                <perch:shop id="shortTitle" />
            <perch:else />
                <perch:shop id="productTitle" />
            </perch:if>
        </h3>
        <perch:if exists="additionalCosts">From </perch:if><span class="product-listing-price">&pound;<perch:shop id="productPrice" /></span>
    </a>
</li>

However if I use a basic echo within the foreach loop it does just display the 4 products per category:

foreach ($products as $product) {
    echo $product['productSlug'].'<br>';

    $product_ids[] = $product['productID'];
}

I have just been playing around a bit more and it now seems that the loading of the template is the problem. I have removed everything else within the foreach loop and just left

perch_shop_custom(array(
    'template'=>'home_page_listing.html'
));

This still seems to pass all the data through correctly but still lists all products in the database and I can see why now, when I use perch_shop_custom, I am running that function again. So how do I set the variables, load the template and use the variables in the template without perch_shop_custom running $r = $Products->get_custom($opts); again?

But won't that still run the function and query and therefore a second unnecessary call to the database? That is the main thing I am trying to avoid as all the data is already available from

$products = perch_shop_products_by_category($cat->categorySlug(), 4, false, $product_ids);

Because I don't know how else to call the template and populate it, which is why I was trying out PerchSystem::set_vars() - I presumed that is what I needed to take the data already queried from the db and load it into the necessary template and the only way I could find to load the template and populate it from the PerchSystem::set_vars() (per the documentation) was to use perch_shop_custom().

So, how do I load the listing_html template and populate it with the correct data within my foreach loop?

Oh how I knew it would be a simple solution that I just couldn't find :) Thanks Drew.

Just want to point out that even though this is a shop template, I had to change perch:shop to perch:content for it to work.

Maybe a template to add in: perch_shop_template() ??