Hi Guys,
Ok, I'll post what I am trying to do. I don't just want this done for me, I want to understand it so I can develop this stuff on my own. But at this point I can't wrap my mind around it. I'm working on a small classified ad website. There will be several main categories, such as Homes, Vehicles, Aircraft, etc. Each main category has it's own set of tables. I want to build a catalog for each main category. Even though each category is very similar in structure (data base, forms, ad view) they are different enough that I have to keep them seperate. That's really a design issue and a different topic altogether. I'm going to use the category Aircraft for this excercise. There are 4 tables that data is collected in. I'll put a bit of info about each table (what kind of data it collects) behind the name. Core (Primary Key ID, Title) - core record info Details (price, color, # of seats, props) - detailed info, dynamic content for each column (lots of varchars) Features (leather, air conditioning) - all 'bit' yes/no data Descriptions (5000 character description body) Whenever an ad is created, I want to update the appropriate catalog and create a new record for the ad. Now, I take it that I should only have to create a catalog once. So what I planned on doing was created a .cfm document called "CreateAircraftCatalog.cfm" that would simply hold the code to create the catalog. So far I just have the following: <CFCOLLECTION action="create" collection="aircraft_classifieds"> I've used this code to create a collection and did some various tests (using sample code found on the web) to test that the catalog was active. It was simple code to query the catalog and return the records. Is it complete enough? Any guidance on how to make a better catalog? Now what I'm really stumped with is how to update/alter records in the catalog. Here is the CFINDEX I have so far to update the catalog when a new ad is listed. This code would directly follow the CFQUERIES used to update the database. <cfindex action="update" collection="aircraft_classifieds" type="custom" key="#CID#" title="#FORM.title#" URLpath="http://company.com/classifieds/classifieds.cfm? fuseaction=aircraft_cv1&cid=#CID#" body="FORM.title, FORM.price, FORM.description, FORM.ZIP"> Questions 1. in cfindex, there is a parameter called 'TYPE'. I set this to custom since it wouldn't otherwise accept my value for the KEY parameter. Is that right? 2. in cfindex, there is a parameter called 'KEY'. To my understanding you would set this parameter to equal the 'unique key value' for each record in the database. AKA, if an ad was record_id= 456, the 'key' parameter would be set to 456. Is this correct? I thought the purpose of this was to relate the record in the catalog to the record in the database. For whatever reason, I'm thinking I don't understand this correctly since I've also seen the KEY set to completely different things, like a URL or a filepath. 3. in cfindex, there is a parameter called 'Title' and I would like to set this to be equal to the 'title' of the ad. aka title would be set to equal '1987 Cessna 8 seater plane - low flight time' 4. in cfindex, there is a parameter called 'URLpath' and I would like to set this to the URL to view the ad. Basically, the result set given by OPENBD after doing cfsearch and querying the catalog, I would like the results to be displayed by showing the title, which is a link, with the URL for the link being the URL found in the URLPATH variable. Both the TITLE and URLPATH would be taken from the catalog. 5. for the body parameter, I just fill this with variables and content that I want to be searched, correct? If so, I plan to just fill it with data related to the ad. Price, age, location, description, etc. This is all I need really. It seems that once I get this straightened out, I can start assembling the catalogs and make them searcheable. As it stands now, users can login, create ads, view the ads, edit them, delete them, etc. I just don't have any way to search for them. If anybody can help me get this straightened out, I would greatly appreciate it! -- Open BlueDragon Public Mailing List http://www.openbluedragon.org/ http://twitter.com/OpenBlueDragon mailing list - http://groups.google.com/group/openbd?hl=en !! save a network - please trim replies before posting !!
