EXT : Categorization¶

Glossary¶

[from http://www.searchtools.com/info/classifiers.html]

Categorization is the process of associating a document with one or more subject categories. So the entry for a page on cross trainer shoes could go into Running, Manufacturing, Sports Medicine, etc. All of these are legitimate, depending on the context.

Cataloging and Classification come from libraries, where specialists enter the metadata (such as author, date, title and edition) for a document, apply subject categories to it, and place it into a class (such as a call number) for later retrieval. These tend to be used interchangeably with Categorization.

A Thesaurus is a set of related terms describing a set of documents. This is not hierarchical: it describes the standard terms for concepts in a controlled vocabulary. Thesauri include synonyms and more complex relationships, such as broader or narrower terms, related terms and other forms of words.

Taxonomy is the organization of a particular set of information for a particular purpose. It comes from biology, where it's used to define the single location for a species within a complex hierarchic. Biologists have arguments about where various species belong, although DNA analysis can resolve most of the questions. In informational taxonomies, items can fit into several taxonomic categories.

Ontology is the study of the categories of things within a domain. It comes from philosophy and provides a logical framework for academic research on knowledge representation. Work on ontologies involves schema and diagrams for showing relationships in Venn diagrams, trees, lattices and so on.

What does it do?¶

The smile_categorization extension adds a categorization feature to Typo3.

One way to look at this extension is as a new mean of delivering a content item in pages other than the one where it was created. Typo3 already allows this, but mostly on a one-by-one basis, and a ‘target driven’ approach, meaning you go to the target page, you say “I will add something here”, you pick a content and you’re done. This is not always satisfactory. First you may want a more ‘source driven’ approach, meaning a scheme where you think about other deliveries of the content when you create it . Secondly, categorization is a rule-based mechanism for defining multiple delivery. And finally, the tree structure of categories will allow to define alternate navigation schemes.

Here’s how it works. Basically, you can define one or several hierarchical trees of categories, then you may define a relationship between a content and one or more of these categories. Defining this relationship is optional, thus some contents may not be categorized, while others may be linked to several categories. Once contents have been categorized, you may deliver content according to these categorization schemes. This possibility may be used to provide more than one navigation logic, i.e. a way for visitors to access content not through the primary organization, but through alternate organizations.

Let us consider the following example.

Imagine your web site is about music. You have designed a primary structure as per music genre, say Rock, Jazz, Latin, New Age, Inspirational, Opera, etc. But this is not the only way to categorize music. You might also have organized your contents as per countries , or per price range , or per Record Company , or many other schemes. And some visitors could be more pleased with these other schemes.

Well, the smile_categorization extension allows you to provide several organization and thus several navigation schemes within your content.

When a new content item is created, a piece of music, it is created within a given node as per the primary tree structure, and also linked to a country, an author, a price range, a record company. And on the front-end side, your site may propose to navigate the music arena per record company .

One thing to notice, which this example did not mention, is that each categorization axis may be linear (Rock, Jazz, Latin, etc.) or hierarchical i.e. organized as a tree (classical, classical>romantic, classical>romantic>berlioz, …).

More specifically :

• Categories are created by creating pages with the “category” type.
• One or more categories can be matched to unspecified contents.
• “Category” pages behave like standard pages : they can have their own contents and be linked into a tree structure.
• “Category” pages automatically display categorized contents, i.e. content linked to the category. Category pages may be hidden if this automatic delivery is not wanted.
• Categorized contents can be displayed as complete contents or as summaries with a link to the original content.
• A plugin is available to display categorized contents with many formats on an unspecified page.

Create a category¶

To create a category, create a page in the tree structure of the pages of the site. There are two possibilities to make this page a category:

• Set its type to “ category ” (in the “ Edit page header ” menu) ;
• Set its type to “ advanced ” and check the “ Activate as a category ” checkbox.

When a page is “categorized”, a field called “ category name ” is available. This field enables to give a name to the category. If a category name is set, it will be used instead of the page title in the list of all the categories available to categorize a content.

Categorize a content¶

Once categories, and category trees are defined, you may categorize content items.

To associate one or more categories to a content, edit the content in the back-end and click on the “Categories of the content” field. A pop-up window is opened with the tree structure of the site (the tree could be limited to a part of the site tree structure, cf. Section “Configuration/Display of the element browser”). Only categories are clickable. Click on the category you want to associate to the content. Repeat the process for each category.

To see the result in the front-end, go to one of the category pages you have associated your content to. This content is then automatically displayed on this page.

Plugin “Category contents”¶

To display categorized contents in an unspecified page, insert a plugin and choose the “Category contents” one. These two fields are then available :

• Categories to display : this field enables to choose one or more categories among the available categories ;
• Type of display : this field enables to choose the display type
• Categories tree : displays the tree structure of the selected categories ;
• Contents list (titles and abstracts) : displays contents abstracts and titles with a link to the original contents ;
• Contents list (complete contents) : displays the complete contents.

Installation¶

To install the extension using the Extension Manager, choose the module " Ext Manager " in the left menu. Then, choose " Import extensions from online repository " in the top menu and select this extension in the list. Click Ok to all changes asked by Typo3.

In order the category pages to display categorized contents, the following lines have to be copied in your typoscript template (where CONTENT_ZONE is the HTML marker in your template file) :

subparts.CONTENT_ZONE = COA

# Contents from the current page
subparts.CONTENT_ZONE.10 = CONTENT
subparts.CONTENT_ZONE.10 < styles.content.get

# Contents from categories
subparts.CONTENT_ZONE.20 < tempCategorisation

Parameters¶

plugin.smile_categorization {

  # HTML template used to display contents in abstract mode.
  templateFile = typo3conf/ext/smile_categorisation/template.tmpl

  # Threshold beyond which contents are displayed in abstract mode.
  nbmax = 6

  # Abstract length in number of chars.
  abstractLength = 100

  # Display order type of contents : 'date' ou 'title' :
  orderType = date

  # Display contents in ascendent 'asc' or descendent 'desc' order :
  orderAsc = desc

}

# Root page for the categories tree
categoryRootPid = 18

Overridden classes¶

The Typo3 following classes are overridden by the smile_categorization extension :

• the tslib_cObj class from the tslib/class.tslib_content.php file is overridden by the ux_tslib_cObj class from the typo3conf/ext/smile_categorization/class.ux_tslib_cObj.php file;
• the TBE_PageTree and SC_browse_links classes from the typo3/browse_links.php file are overridden by the ux_TBE_PageTree and ux_SC_browse_links classes from the typo3conf/ext/smile_categorization/browse_links_category.php file.

Database update¶

tt_content and pages tables are modified by the smile_categorization extension. The following fields are added :