VbzCart/docs/tables/cat topic

About

Usage

• Used by: Template:Vbzcart, Template:Vbzcart/query

Generally, Topics are to be used in the following places:

• Topic pages (show what titles are assigned)
• Topic index (show what item types are [(1) available (2) in stock] for each topic)
• Title pages
  • show what topics the title is in
  • summarize how many other titles are available for each topic
  • (future) show thumbnails for titles in topics with the A flag

In most display context, Topics should be sorted properly. (I thought I had already documented this but can't find it anywhere, so this is a first-pass reconstruction.) Sorting should generally be:<mysql>ORDER BY Sort, Name</mysql>

History

• 2010-10-13 Coding (store and admin) in progress; noted 3 possible fields to add
• 2011-02-04 working
• 2011-02-05 New fields: NameMeta and Usage
• 2011-02-24 New fields: cntTiHere and cntTiSub to support lookup-free indication of where to find active titles
• 2011-09-28 renamed from brs_topics to cat_topic

Future

• Fields I'm considering adding:
  • A) a flag to indicate that thumbnails of other items in the same category should be shown
  • B) a prefix to be added to NameFull for all child nodes (and maybe a flag to override it)
  • C) a way of creating "virtual" nodes to cross-link to related topics in other branches

SQL

<mysql>DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `cat_topic`; CREATE TABLE `cat_topic` (

 `ID`        INT              NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
 `ID_Parent` INT          DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "cat_topic.ID of parent topic",
 `Name`      VARCHAR(128)     NOT NULL COMMENT "generic name (context-free, but as short as possible)",
 `NameTree`  VARCHAR(64)  DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "name within context of parent; defaults to Name",
 `NameFull`  VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "descriptive standalone name (context free, can be long)",
 `NameMeta`  VARCHAR(144) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "plain text for HTML META description tag",
 `Usage`     VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "usage instructions for this topic - show when editing topic",

/* `Details` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "additional information of interest to regular users (may include HTML)", */

 `Sort`      VARCHAR(15)  DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "optional sorting key",
 `Variants`  VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "synonyms and other keywords which should find this topic",
 `Mispeled`  VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "same as Variants, but these are WRONG spellings; avoid displaying",
 `cntTiHere` INT          DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "calculated: number of active titles for this topic",
 `cntTiSub`  INT          DEFAULT NULL COMMENT "calculated: sum of active titles for all subtopics",
 PRIMARY KEY(`ID`)

) ENGINE = MYISAM;</mysql>