Product Creation Suggestion

[TheCaptain]

Hello, I'm brand new to virtuemart -

I need to create a shoping cart with a small number of seperate products.  Each product as a few different models.   They're actually car parts.   Then I have a list of about 1000 cars and each model for each part only applies to certain cars.    Is there way to create a car database and have virtuemart check compatability against the models??

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

[balai]

I suppose that you can use custom fields for that.

1. Create a custom field (string) named Car Models
2. Assign to your car parts products that custom field and give it as values the models that match to that part.

In the front-end you can use a filtering extension like custom filters to search for the appropriate parts based on the Car Model criteria

[SamF]

One easy way to do it is to create category <-> product relation. Car models = categories, parts = products, and product belong in certain one or many categories. Even more, you can build category "Models", and category "Part Groups" (that is, engine, transmission etc.). So you can filter parts by both car model and part group.

[balai]

Yes this is another solution but you will have to create 1000 categories and least and passing your products to them will be a bit pain in the as*

[SamF]

1. Create a custom field (string) named Car Models

create category <-> product relation.

will be a bit pain

Sure it will, in such a mass input any way;) I would not use VirtueMart interface for it, rather SQL. Or invent component like this to import external tables.