I'm looking for some suggestions on a direction for a directory that we're trying to build. This will be a directory of certified products.
Certification comes from completing a conformance test and submitting the results of that test. A test has certain characteristics that can apply to a family of products.
I've started with a basic structure of content types that look like:
* Test Results
* Products
Multiple products can be associated with a single test result. Currently, I'm handling this with node reference fields, but have looked at other options like Node2Node and Relativity.
The problem comes from two facts:
- Important information that people will want to search are fields on the Test Results. For example, a Test Result has a field that will indicate that it supports Standard X. Therefore, we really don't want test results showing up in the search results.
- Test results themselves are pretty meaningless to end users. They really want to know that Product A supports Standard X. This is something that can be inferred from the product's relationship with the test results, but they are properties of the test result, not the product itself.
Finally, we'd really like to build this using the faceted search module.
I've been theorizing that some of the options might be:
- Try to find some way to inherit field values from one object to another.
- Create the same fields on the product and make them not editable. Then clone the test results and convert it into a product content type. (Note: test results are immutable so while this is copying data around, at least I don't have to worry about things getting out of sync--in theory :-).
- Replace faceted search results with views that include a relationship. Not sure how this will impact the display of narrowing values.
Any other suggestions? I would appreciate any help anyone can offer.