Interchangeable attribute groups

[RoHFT]

Hi guys,

I didn't really find a better title for the post. :-)

Following scenario:

We're trying to build an online catalog for our product portfolio which mostly consists of cables or adaptors.

Each product has four attributes:
- Side A connector-type (e.g. HDMI)
- Side A gender (e.g. male)
- Side B connector-type (e.g. VGA)
- Side B gender (e.g. female)

The customer should be able to filter the product list with these criteria.

The thing is: "Side A" and "Side B" must be interchangeable.

If we enter the values as four seperate attributes in Magento and the customer on the frontend filters:

- Side A connector: VGA
- Side A gender: female
- Side B connector: HDMI
- Side B gender: male

he would get no results, but the cable mentioned above would be applicable.


If we would make just two MULTI-attributes "Connector Types" and "Genders" with both values in a single attribute this problem is solved. BUT: Now it is not defined which side is female and which side is male. So if our catalog holds products with other combinations of these values too (e.g. VGA male - HDMI female or VGA male - HDMI male), these products would also be shown. So the customer can't filter down to the ONE cable he needs, but has to search the list of all the filter results.


So what we would need is to kind of "group" the two attributes "Connector Type" and "Gender" for each side. And then make this two "attribute groups" interchangeable.

Is that possible out of the box or is there an extension for such cases? How deep would we have to "dig" into the source code if this function would have to be built by ourselves?

Thanks so much in advance!

Flo

[theMageComp]

Hi @RoHFT,

Not any extension are avilable but you can try this.
You can combine both attributes into with the single attribute with these all possible options:

You add options like this :
1. VGA male - HDMI female
2. VGA male - HDMI male
3. VGA female - HDMI male
4. VGA female - HDMI female

[RoHFT]

Thanks for your answer!

Yeah, I thought of that, too -  but that would make the list of options in the filter navigation very long since we have a lot of connector types.

Another option that came into my mind would be to not list all the variants as seperate options as you mentioned, but to take connector type and gender into a single string and make two MULTI-attributes with both possible values:

Side 1: VGA male, HDMI female

Side 2: VGA male, HDMI female

In that case the cable would be found regardless on which side the customers chooses a specific interface and the correlation gender <-> connector type would also be predefined.

This wouldn't make the list as long as your suggestion - but propably still too long for a decent usability in the filter navigation.

The tool we use at the moment has a dirty way of handling that problem, which we would like to avoid in our redesign with Magento: Each product row is duplicated on import, where the attributes "Side A ConType" becomes "Side B ConType" and "Side A Gender" becomes "Side B Gender" and the other way around. So every product is in our database twice to ensure that the customer can filter the options for both cable sides.

Maybe any other ideas on my initial request? We're not that experienced in Magento development so it's hard for me to estimate the efforts for coding a solution by ourselves. An thought on that from a more experienced Magento developer?

Thanks!

[theMageComp]

There isn't any other way available to combine this in your requirement. Hope you are getting me.