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Thread tagged as: Question, Problem

Filtering category based on dropdown selection

Hi there,

I'm trying to filter categories based on the value of a dropdown. If user select yes in the dropdown, the category will be shown on the home page. My template looks like this:

<perch:before><ul class="column column--by-four"></perch:before>
    <li class="column__item">
        <perch:category id="catTitle" type="smarttext" label="Title" required="true" />
        <perch:category id="catSlug" type="slug" for="catTitle" suppress="true" />
        <perch:category id="home_visible" type="select" label="Visible on home page" options="Yes, No" allowempty="false" required="true" />
    </li>
<perch:after></ul></perch:after>

I output the categories like so:

perch_categories(array(
      'set' => 'clients',
      'template' => 'clients.html',
      'filter' => 'home_visible',
      'match' => 'eq',
      'value' => 'Yes'
));

Somehow, I get no result or a empty array when I skip-template. If I remove the filter, match and value, here's the output I get:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [home_visible] => Yes
            [catID] => 4
            [setID] => 2
            [catParentID] => 0
            [catTitle] => Something
            [catSlug] => something
            [catPath] => clients/something/
            [catDisplayPath] => Something
            [catOrder] => 1
            [catTreePosition] => 002-001
            [catDepth] => 1
            [...]
        )

Any idea? Weird part, if I filter based on catTitle, it does work.

Cheers,
Robin Pick

Robin Pick 5 points

  • 6 years ago
Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan 2638 points
Perch Support

6 years ago

Hmm, interesting!

Could you add debug to the page and let me know what it outputs?
Robin Pick

Robin Pick 5 points

6 years ago

Ha, looks like the debug has something interesting: Invalid query: SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'home_visible' in 'where clause'

If that helps: the same issue occurred when I tried to use a checkbox.

Debug Message
SELECT * FROM perch2_pages WHERE pagePath='/index.php' LIMIT 1
Using template: /templates/pages/attributes/seo.html
Using template: /templates/pages/attributes/seo.html
Using template: /templates/pages/attributes/seo.html
Using template: /templates/pages/attributes/seo.html
SELECT regionKey, regionHTML FROM perch2_content_regions WHERE regionPage='/index.php' OR regionPage='*' ORDER BY regionPage DESC
SELECT regionID, regionTemplate, regionPage, regionRev AS rev FROM perch2_content_regions WHERE regionKey='Our work' AND (regionPage='/our-work.php' OR regionPage='*')
SELECT * FROM ( SELECT idx.itemID, c.regionID, idx.pageID, c.itemJSON, idx2.indexValue as sortval FROM perch2_content_index idx JOIN perch2_content_items c ON idx.itemID=c.itemID AND idx.itemRev=c.itemRev AND idx.regionID=c.regionID JOIN perch2_content_index idx2 ON idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemRev=idx2.itemRev AND idx2.indexKey='_order' WHERE ((idx.regionID=6 AND idx.itemRev=75)) AND idx.itemID=idx2.itemID AND idx.itemRev=idx2.itemRev ) as tbl GROUP BY itemID ORDER BY sortval ASC LIMIT 0, 12
Using template: /templates/content/our-work/work_listing.html
SELECT * FROM perch2_categories ORDER BY catTreePosition ASC
SELECT setID FROM perch2_category_sets WHERE setSlug='clients' LIMIT 1
SELECT main.* FROM perch2_categories main WHERE 1=1 AND (home_visible='Yes') AND setID='2' ORDER BY catTreePosition ASC
Invalid query: SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'home_visible' in 'where clause'
Using template: /templates/categories/clients.html
SELECT setID FROM perch2_category_sets WHERE setSlug='' LIMIT 1
SELECT main.* FROM perch2_categories main WHERE 1=1 ORDER BY catTreePosition ASC
Using template: /templates/categories/category.html
Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan 2638 points
Perch Support

6 years ago

I think it may be that categories can't be filtered on a custom field. I think we were trying to optimise by not building a search index for those. If it's coming up as a requirement we'll revisit that.
Robin Pick

Robin Pick 5 points

6 years ago

It's not a big deal but I do believe that could be useful in some cases – though it doesn't seem that many people asked for this. In the end, though it isn't ideal, I still can use css to hide the category.

Thanks for your answer!
Robin Pick

Robin Pick 5 points

6 years ago

Quick follow-up on this, maybe it will be useful for some: I found a better way to show/hide specific categories on a given page. Thanks to Perch's flexibility, that works great.

Instead of using a dropdown in the category template (that would essentially set the visibility of the category item to show or hide using a class), I now use a region with the category tag display-as="checkboxes".

<perch:categories id="clients" label="Clients" set="clients" required="true" display-as="checkboxes" divider-before="Client to be shown on the home page">
      <perch:template path="categories/clients.html" />
</perch:categories>

What I like about it is that I can simply include the template of the category in my region template and that I don't have to use css to display: none/block the category item. For the content manager, it makes also more sense to decide which client to show on the home page from a region rather than in the category section of the CMS.

Anyway, I'm again super pleased by how flexible Perch is. Great job!

Cheers.
John Rose

John Rose 6 points

6 years ago

I so appreciate the follow-up. Thank you!