Im currently writing a category-system that can handle infinite levels of subcategories.
If the category has a parent = 0, its a main category, anything else and its a subcategory.
That way i can nest the categories in as many levels i need.
My problem is how i can list all the categories. I need a loop that can manage any number of levels, and preferably with a level-counter so i can get the number of parent categories this category have.
I’ve experimented with while()-loops and functions calling themselfs to try to create a loop that only ends when the category has no sub-categories.
Anyone know of a smart solution to this?
Appriciate all help, guys.
If needed i can post my experimental code, but im guessing there is a best practise to this problem.
I do, check out this article about implementing adjacency list in PostgreSQL with a helper table for efficient queries. If you’re still interested, there is a perl implementation that generates all necessary db structures. It should work in PostgreSQL and SQLite.
I find this better than nested set because it’s easier to debug and the efficiency is comparable.
I started thinking about generating a json for the structure thats rewritten when changes to the categories are made, and that might be easier to work with. Havent had time to test i yet, but ill get back to you.
Every solutions includes some form of cache, because usually there are a lot of reads (expensive) from the tree and very few changes to the tree. This is the same argument that makes nested set a valid solution.
