How to link between two categories in different root catalog?

Question

I'm a newbie to Magento.

I've 2 root categories and sub-categories as follow.

Root Catalog Site1
- Sub-category 1.1
- Sub-category 1.2
- Sub-category 1.3
- Featured

Root Catalog Site 2
- Sub-category 2.1
- Sub-category 2.2
- Sub-category 2.3

I created 2 sites as mainstore.example.com and store2.example.com I created some products for each of categories. When I create some products of Sub-category 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3, I'll marke as featured products at Featured category of Root Catalog Site1.

And I want to display same Featured products at every stores of the example.com.

How can I link between two categories in different root catalog?

Answer 1

2 Roots don't mix very well. Each store has a specific root category and retrieving data from the others root category will be very trick.

The best approach would be to give both the root categories a 'Featured' category and add the product to both.

[EDIT] If you do want to do this there are, in my opinion, 2 options which will both require you to write your own code, preferably in a custom extension. Mind you, to be able to actually sell these products from the other stores the have to be assigned to them on the websites tab under Product Management.

• Webservices are provided by Magento to access store data remotely. Since the other shops are basically 'remote' you can use the API's to access the other stores category and retrieve the products, then display them.
• Store emulation in the code, emulate the store with the featured category to retrieve the products from that category. The only downside is that the URL's to the products might be of the wrong store.

Personally I would go for option 1, but that's just my preference.