ok I've restored categories.php (theme file) back to how it was. Error has now gone. Testing new extention.. please wait.

edit- didnt work for me. I bet it's going to turn out to be something really silly. Do you have msn or another form of contact? Do you mind taking a look and trying to get it running?

thanks again.

I will whisper you my MSN, Vaz.

Milingo, I don't see how nesting would work on the main discussion page. As the whole point of seeing sub-categories is that you are within a category. Or am I misunderstanding you?

Adam.

Okay, Vaz's problem is due to using the > character in his parent category name. Not sure why this is yet, I presume it has something to do with Vanilla stripping HTML from category titles, interfering with the rendering on the discussions pages, when I know the problem and have fixed it, I will make another release (but till now, try to avoid using the > character).

Adam.

These seem to be due to the dashes in the sub-category names. I will also look into this when I look into the issue later today. It seems to be a general issue with special characters in names.

This one seems a little more obvious to fix. It is thinking they are sub sub categories, which is a problem (generally, it is making a mince meat of things... but at least I know what it is down to).

I have a fix in progress.

Adam.

I am just going to count all -'s that are not at the front, and subtract them from the overall count. I don't want to get into regex, it is slow, and I am not great at it either ;-).

Adam.

Uploaded version 0.2.2 of SubCategories.

Brilliant! It's working fine.

Hello cowboystyle, welcome. To your questions...

1. This currently isn't possible. It would be doable, but would be quite a mission due to the complexity of having unlimited levels of attachment (if that makes sense). Perhaps someone might like to undertake this as an extension with a requirement of the SubCategories extension?

2. Due to the nature of how Vanilla allows extensions to interact with the core (you are quite removed, and can only dip in at designated points to alter things) I had to do this by forceably altering the titles before they got rendered in the theme (it was best for compatibility). As such, it is quite difficult to alter how this works (you would need to modify my extension). Though, in the future, I would consider changing how this functions if more pragmatic suggestions are made.

3. I am not sure if this is doable through theming. You would need to use an extension to overload the GetDiscussionForm function in the DiscussionForm class, it wouldn't be pretty.

I think I can see what you want to get out of the SubCategories extension. It is doable, but not very easily... it might take creating an extension purely tailored to your requirement. One extension that might help that I am working on an update for at the moment, is MultiRoles - which I hope to provide the ability to make categories read only. That way you would be able to control where people post to through permissions.

Hmm, I am being a bit incoherent, I apologise.

Adam.

This might be a bug, but it looks like Sub-Categories aren't viewable on the parent category page until you manually move the the child under the parent on the category creation page.

Adam:

Just finished the alpha version of an XML RPC interface for some common functions for Vanilla, one of the functions being Category Creation. I can't get it to work with SubCategories (that is categories added with "- " don't register as sub categories) and I'm not quite sure where to begin for adding subcategories. Any advice?

Uploaded version 0.2.2 of SubCategories.

SubCategories does not detect child categories with same name like so:

Dakota
- North
- South
Carolina
- North
- South

Carolina's children will never show up, so I came up with a quick fix which passes around the Category object instead of just relying on the name.

Quick fix to detect SubCategories with same names:

In "default.php":
ln160 : function IsSubCategory($Category, $CurrentName = '', $Zealous = false) {
ln165 : $Level = CategoryLevel($Category->Name);
ln172 : $Parent = GetParent($Category->CategoryID, $Category->Name, $Level);
ln326 : if(IsSubCategory($DiscussionGrid->Category)) {

In "sub-categories.php":
ln41 : if(IsSubCategory($Category, $CurrentName)) {

Okay, I will look in to these =), cheers guys.

Adam.

Would it be possible to list the sub-categories on the main Category tab/page?

I would like to have them displayed, as clicking into the categories first, then seeing the subtopics does not let you quickly peruse all available topics at a glance. To clarify, what I am asking if it is possible to have the Main Category page display in nested format all of the Categories, sub-cat topics.

Thanks!!

Hey, thanks for quick reply. Completely understood. Will wait or find someone within my discussion group to hack at it.

Demo-

This is not about inheriting permissions, it is a stylistic change and only a stylistic change, it is designed to be a simplistic solution to SubCategories within Vanilla.

Adam.

Anyone got a url of this in action please? Would love to see it working.

this does nto really work for me
any ideas why?

Someone whispered me about my solution to this, but I thought maybe it was useful enough to post here too.

I wanted to, instead of just showing a count of Sub Categories under the parent category, actually list out all the subcategories with links.

My solution is below, although it should probably be generalized a bit more. Maybe it could be added to a future version of the extension?

------------------------------------------------------------------

In default.php under Subcategories I added this function (right under the line that reads "// Theme functions"...around 199)


function SubCatList ($CategoryID,
$list_prefix="<div>",
$list_suffix="</div>\n",
$sub_cat_item_prefix="",
$sub_cat_item_suffix="",
$sub_cat_item_separator=", ")
{
global $Context;

$CategoryManager = $Context->ObjectFactory->NewContextObject($Context, 'CategoryManager');
$Data = $CategoryManager->GetCategories(1);

$Category = $Context->ObjectFactory->NewObject($Context, 'Category');
$BeginSubForums = 0;
$SubForums = 0;
$CurrentName = '';
$return_list = '';

$Count = 0;

$Level = false;

while ($Row = $Context->Database->GetRow($Data))
{
$Category->Clear();
$Category->GetPropertiesFromDataSet($Row);
$Category->FormatPropertiesForDisplay();

if ($Category->CategoryID == $CategoryID)
{
$BeginSubForums = 1;
$CurrentName = $Category->Name;
$Level = CategoryLevel($CurrentName);
$return_list = $list_prefix;

}

if($BeginSubForums == 1)
{

if($Category->Name != $CurrentName)
{
if(CategoryLevel($Category->Name) <= $Level)
{
$return_list .= $list_suffix;
break;
}

if ($Count > 0)
$return_list .= $sub_cat_item_separator;

$return_list .= $sub_cat_item_prefix .
'<a href="' .
GetUrl($Context->Configuration, 'index.php', '',
'CategoryID', $Category->CategoryID) .
'">'.
SubNameTidy($Category->Name) .'</a>' .
$sub_cat_item_suffix;

$Count++;
}
}

}

return $return_list;

}




Then in theme/subcategories.php were it's calling SubCount($Category->CategoryID, 'categories'), instead call SubCatList ($CategoryID)

That'll more or less do it.

Hamed: Yes, there should be a "sub-categories.php" included with the add-on that needs to be uploaded to the appropriate theme folder(s). Certain options also require you to modify your categories.php file, check the readme.

Can this be used to do "sections" in the style of the more generic forum systems (vB, phpBB, PunBB, etc.)? That is, I basically want to have a few parent categories, which are just for visual organization -- you have to post in one of the subcategories. (It needs only be two levels deep. The top-level abstract sections, and the categories they contain.) And on the main Categories page, each should show its immediate subcategories.

Is that possible?
Well, I'm sure it is, but has anyone done it? :)

Structurally, that's real easy if you combine it with Category Roles. Just set the parent category to read-only. Visually/style-wise, getting the sub-categories to show up on the main category page will require some modification of categories.php and/or sub-categories.php.

@timfire: Yeah, I already got the Category Roles bit. Thanks. I'll see if I can figure out a way to get the templates to do what I want...

@conradslater: It's a separate add-on.

I don't think this extension is working for me but I want to make sure it does what I think it does before I start troubleshooting.

What I have done...
I have made the following categories:
CO2 Incubators
- Troubleshooting
- - The Temperature is Too High
- - The Temperature is Too Low
Bactron User Group

There are discussions in the Bactron User Group but that does not matter since I don't need subcategories there.

In the CO2 Incubator category only the sub sub categories ("The Temperature is Too High" and "The Temperature is Too Low") have discussions in them.

I have started a discussion in "The Temperature is Too High" titled "Possible Cause is the Controller"

My Issues:
In Vanilla, when I click on Categories I only see CO2 Incubators and Bactron User Group. If I click on CO2 Incubators I do not see the sub category. It says "No discussions found". Should I see the subcategory here?

The discussion I started shows up on the front page of "Discussions". When I click on it I see the post. The breadcrumb shows the cat and the sub sub cat but is missing the sub category. It is "CO2 Incubators > The Temperature is Too High » Possible Cause is the Controller". Why is the subcategory "Troubleshooting" missing?

Something is not right, correct?

Any ideas what could be wrong. I have not made any mods to the system. I have added the following themes and extensions.

Theme
Blogger

Extensions
AjaxQuote
Applicant Email Verification
Html Formatter
Notify
Nuggets
Preview Post
SubCategories

Everything is up to date.

Thanks for any help
Jed

Installed it and worked great.

One feature request: In the categories view, could each parent topic have a listing of the sub-categories in it? A forum listing might look like:

# Support Questions
# Category description Technical help about the XO laptop. Synced with the community-support@lists.laptop.org mailing list.
# Discussions: 280 | Sub-forums: Software, Hardware, Networking

If you give me some insight into *how* to implement that (any similar code samples I could use as a reference?) I would even be willing to try. From there are other neat things we could do form their (have discussion # for each sub-forum being listed, etc), but that is just my daydreaming.