Best practice for outputting breadcrumbs in PHP

Question

As part of an eCommerce solution we're working on, the CMS has the option for product categories to have an unlimited number of sub-categories, and each sub-category can have an unlimited number of sub-categories. Basically, there is an unlimited nesting-level for product categories.

The database table schema for the categories looks something like this:

+-------------+-----------------+----------------+
| category_id |      name       |   parent_id    |
+-------------+-----------------+----------------+
|     1       |    Parent 1     |      null      |
|     2       | Child of Parent |        1       |
+-------------+-----------------+----------------+

We want to add in a breadcrumbs navigation for each level of the category navigation, so my question is, what is the best practice for looping through the categories while there is a parent assigned, until it reaches the top level?

Obviously, we can code it in a fixed loop (for example if($child->hasParent()) { echo '1'; if($child->children->hasParent() { } } etc.

How do you iterate through an unknown number of categories until you reach the top-level category (i.e. the category which has no parent_id assigned?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 25 '11 at 10:40

2

Just use the while loop for this.

while($child->hasParent()) {
     echo $child->name();
     $child = $child->Parent();
}

answered Jun 25 '11 at 10:40

Balanivash

6,709
9
32
48

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 28 '13 at 09:51

0

If(parent class==null)

then child class==null

else hasparent class(null)==0

repeat

answered May 28 '13 at 09:51

john mathew

1

Best practice for outputting breadcrumbs in PHP

2 Answers2