Advanced Search - Custom Attribute Range

Question

I am sure others have encountered this problem before and I am wondering if anyone knows of a solution.

I would like my product to be searchable in the advanced search by a range of sizes.

For example, one parameter would be:

Width: From (dropdown menu)' (dropdown menu)" x To (dropdown menu)' (dropdown menu)"

Height: From (dropdown menu)' (dropdown menu)" x To (dropdown menu)' (dropdown menu)"

In the backend, I would have four attributes:

1. Width-Feet
2. Width-Inches
3. Height-Feet
4. Height-Inches

Or, two attributes:

1. Width - Inches
2. Height - Inches

And I could convert the length in inches to a foot and inches format.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

UPDATE:

I am still kind of lost on how to do something like this (add another parameter for the advanced search). I was assuming that many people would encounter this issue but I have not been able to find any tutorial(s) that I have helped.

Answer 1

First of all I recommend to create two different attributes, one for width and one for height. But you can also store both in one field and separate it by a specified character. But it's easier to filter and sort if you have different fields.

When saving the attribute convert the feet to inches or vice versa, but I would only store feet or inches, not both. You could do this in the backend model of your attribute.

The official manual of how to create a custom attribute (or two) is a good entrance point for that: http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/5_-_modules_and_development/0_-_module_development_in_magento/installing_custom_attributes_with_your_module

Do you want to have the same type of input in the frontend for the layered navigation? Usually the layered navigation is filtering for one exact value, but you can extend that behavior in the apply() method of Mage_Catalog_Model_Layer_Filter_Attribute.

Answer 2

2 Attributes, Store them in millimeters or even just inches. The math is pretty easy:

$inches = ceil($mm/25.4);
$feet = floor(($inches/12));

As for the custom module, all you really need to do is make a custom module that modifies the search result collection with something like:

Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
            ->getCollection()
            ->addFieldToFilter('attribute_one',array('from'=>'10','to'=>'20'))
            ->addFieldToFilter('attribute_two',array('from'=>'10','to'=>'20'))
    );

• http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/magento-for-dev-part-8-varien-data-collections

Hope this helps.