Thread: Include Category Description in Category Description

I have two sub-categories that will contain the same products, but need to appear under different parent categories. I was wondering if there was a way to assign categories to multiple parents like products can be assigned to multiple categories.

Not without some custom programming and database changes.

Database changes? What kind of database changes?

Well right now the database is setup so that all categories/sub categories are all in one table. Each category has a CategoryID and a ParentCategoryID. Root categories have a 0 in ParentCategoryID, meaning they have no parent. A sub-category would have the CategoryID of the category it's listed under as it's ParentCategoryID. This setup allows you to have infinite levels of sub-categories.

With what you are trying to do, you would need to give a category 2 parent id's so if you know that you will only ever need the same category in 2 parent categories, you could, I suppose, add another field to the category table and then update all the stored procedures, class files, entity helpers, etc.

If you would need a category to have unlimited parent categories you would want to change the database structure to more like how a product is included into multiple categories, then change all the stored procedures, class files, entity helpers, etc.

------------------- BUT ------------------------------------

If you are just trying to save yourself from maintaining the products that are included in two different categories(that just happen to have the same name), I think we can find a much simpler solution.

You could maintain one category then run a sql statement on the database to copy all the products in one category to another.

Code:

DELETE FROM ProductCategory
WHERE CategoryID = *CategoryID you want to copy TO*

INSERT INTO ProductCategory
(CategoryID,ProductID)
SELECT *CategoryID you want to copy TO*, ProductID
FROM ProductCategory
WHERE CategoryID = *CategoryID you want to copy FROM*

The first statement deletes all products that are in the category you want to copy to, because you don't want duplicates when you do the copy.

The second statement copies all products into the second category.

I like your SQL solution. I assume the same approach could work for the Description of the category as well.

Thanks.

You could do something like:

Code:

UPDATE Category
Set Description = (SELECT Description FROM Category WHERE CategoryID = *CategoryID to copy FROM*)
WHERE CategoryID = *CategoryID to copy TO*

Or you could copy and paste the description from one category to another