filter by options or attributes

Is there a way to create a menu of attributes for a resultset in order to set a "filtering" device on similar products. For example if I have a resultset of books and I want to create a filtering menu as such:

Age-level:
3-5
6-9
10-12
more...

Binding:
CD
Hardback
Paperback
more...

Theme:
Christmas
Easter
Valentines


These would vary of course by the "category" of products returned. Before these filters show I was thinking that the site visitor would need to be within a "group" or "category" of products like books, shirts, pants etc...

One other member started a thread about this but it turned into a sorting issue not a filtering issue.

Thanks in advance.
Zach

I'm not sure that I fully understand what you are hoping to accomplish as an end result but it sounds like you would like to alter the recordset on the product results page to return the results in another fashion. Currently the recordset by default on the results page returns all of the records, it is filtered by the search criteria that you enter into the search page.

Please describe a little more about what you are trying to accomplish in the end so that we can have a better idea of what the goal is. If you are looking to customize the query that is on the results page it can be tricky because of how complex it is and it may require some custom coding.

I am not selling computer but the best explanation I can give is by example found on best buy's website where you navigate to computers => laptops and then you can "narrow your results by:" price, brand, screen size, etc.

Naturally price would translate to fit any generic product category but I want to add other attributes that fit whatever product category the visitor is browsing by.

To keep it simple how would you set up a "menu" for price ranges so that it could be added to the query in order to filter products where the price range is $10 - $25?

Ultimately I would like to generate that list dynamically based on the resultset currently presented to the visitor.

The general idea with this would be that you need to have a page that will work like the current results page but will be filtered based on the high level criteria like the category.

This is the page that will have the options to further filter based on your criteria like price and category specific options. These search filters should link to another results page that will have a recordset to select the items from that category. You will need to apply The DataAssist Search server behavior to this recordset to filter it by your new criteria.

Once you have done all of that you will then need to update the recordset to closely match the one on the default product results page to retain the consistency of the results and ensure that you only get items that are available for sale.

This is a high level overview of how you could go about something like this. This will not be an easy task though as it will require you to make advanced edits to the new pages you create to get the query to work correctly. The query that is in place on the product results page is already very custom and can be difficult to understand and manipulate.

I am trying to accomplish the same thing, what I am currently doing is adding a simple option titled "Brand" with the only option being the products brand, then under the results page edit the query to select only the products with the option of that brand. I have not had any luck with this however, mainly because the database tables are as you say "very custom and difficult to understand" I am wondering if anyone has the syntax for the query to select all the needed data, or if anyone has succeeded in accomplishing this a different way any information would be helpful.
Thanks

This thread is a couple months old and it would be helpful to have some more info about your setup and what you are trying to accomplish in the end. I think with a little more info about what you currently have setup and the result you are getting we would be better able to help with this.

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