Jump to content

Stupid Problem


Javizy

Recommended Posts

I'm making a little shop site and I'm having a hard time adding product options, like size.

I added a ProductOption table which is related to Product, and has fields id, product_id, option_name, price.

Design wise it seems logical to me, but retrieving and converting the data into a php object isn't so straightforward.

Basically I have a getProducts function that creates an array of Product objects. The Product object has an array of Options as an instance variable.

I can't think of an efficient way of querying the data. I need the Product table fields, along with all ProductOptions associated with that product_id (may be 1 or more).

Has anybody implemented a cart with product options before? If this makes sense to anyone I'd much appreciate some insight, because I'm totally missing something here.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a logical choice assuming your products have varied and multiple product options, which is often the case. Querying does present a challenge, because you need to match multiple rows to find multiple product options.

I'd bet that wickning1 would suggest using multiple self-joins, so that you're back to a one row-one product option scenario. This of course works exceptionally well (as most of wickning1 suggestions do), but can be difficult to maintain in code if you can have lots of options because of the sheer number of joins required.

What I have often done in the past for code simplicity is simply to query the options table with a IN clause, add a COUNT(), GROUP BY product_uid, and then add a HAVING cnt = <# of options>. It may not be the most efficient, and I doubt it's optimized, but I've never had to use anything else thus far.

Just my $0.02.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you're ok with two queries here. One to get the product details for all the products you want, another to get all the options for all those products. Then in PHP you go row by row and link them up. Just make sure you ORDER BY product_id and it shouldn't be too hard.

The alternative is to use a nested loop, get one product, then query for its options. This will generate a lot of queries, which could eventually slow you down. But it should be easy to write.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the replies guys. My first idea was to get a list of product_ids and then query each one for the options but obviously that amount of queries is ridiculous.

I think I'll go with wickning's suggestion of getting a list of product_ids and then getting the options in one query with something like WHERE product_id = xx OR product_id = xx, etc.

I dunno why I didn't think of that, I thought it might be possible with one query (probably would be with an ORDB).

Thanks again for the help, after I've done this the shop section is pretty much finished :-D
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is more than a year old. Please don't revive it unless you have something important to add.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.