Selecting a category displays the category description, as shown in
Figure 5-9.
Figure 5-9. Selecting the Animal category
How It Works: The categories_list Componentized Template
The categories_list componentized template works similarly to the departments_list. The
CategoriesList class (located in the presentation/categories_list.php presentation object file)
has three public members that can be accessed from the template file (categories_list.tpl):
// Public variables for the smarty template
public $mSelectedCategory = 0;
public $mSelectedDepartment = 0;
public $mCategories;
CHAPTER 5 ?– CREATING THE PRODUCT CATALOG: PART 2 155
$mSelectedCategory retains the category that is selected, which must be displayed with a different style than
the other categories in the list. The same is true with $mSelectedDepartment. $mCategories is the list of
categories you populate the categories list with. This list is obtained with a call to the business tier.
The links in the categories list are created using the Link::ToCategory() method to ensure the consistency of
the links across the site and to ensure they??™re also properly escaped (& is transformed to &, and so on).
Displaying Product Lists
Whether on the main web page or browsing a category, some products should appear instead
of the ???Place list of products here??? text. Here, you create the products_list componentized
template, which is capable of displaying a list containing detailed information about the products.
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