Roundup: Is Category Usable?

FWIW, I have just finished implementing the category module on my own site, and I am now running it with no critical problems that I can think of. So I, for one, believe that the one word answer to your question is yes: the category module in its present state is usable.

The two modules that people seem to be experiencing the most trouble with, category_menu and category_pathauto, and doing their job more than adequately for me:

- I am running category_menu on my site, and while I have noticed a few minor bugs with it, overall it is proving to be more use to me than it is trouble.
- I am also running category_pathauto, and I can say the same for that: it's not perfect, but it's certainly doing its job.

I guess that this is bad news for you guys, because it means that I'm more or less happy with the present state of the category module, and so I have very little motivation (or time!) right now to devote to fixing bugs that I either don't see or aren't bothered by.

Maybe the problem is simply that I wrote the category module to do things the way that I like things done, and that I didn't make the module generic enough to work for other people's needs and ways of thinking as well. I don't know. At the moment, it certainly seems that this is likely, because the category module works for the setups that I have in mind, but for other people it just doesn't seem to fit the bill.

AFAIK, the main thing that really doesn't work at the moment in the category module is scalability. A site with thousands of categories will run so slow that the whole site simply will not work. A number of people (including myself) are looking into this, and several issue threads are currently working to resolve this issue through various bug fixes. Luckily for me, this is not a problem with my own site, as it doesn't have enough categories for the performance hit to kick in. But I am aware that other people DO have bigger sites, and I realise that it's only a matter of time before one of MY sites gets big enough for this to become an issue. As such , this is still something that I am working to improve.

I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this topic.

Category is definitely usable. We have just launched a site based on the Category module. It worked well for us, seems stable, and we are most grateful to Jaza for this module that made it possible to organize a lot of information for visually impaired adults. VisionAWARE.org is the site. The structure isn't complicated; our real challenges was in creating the kind of view we wanted for the information and in making sure everything was accessible for the various types of screen readers and for people of varying visual impairments. Category was just what we needed for having information available under more than one topic and was a boon to our development. Thanks again Jaza.

Yeah, I find Categories quite usable. It is very functional, and people like the structure.

The thing that pains me is that the Module could be so much cooler than its already cool self. Things like being able to be able to create content from a specific category (and have the Category information imported into the the node creation form) would make this something completely unique and excellent. Hopefully someone with more skills than me will rise to the challenge. I'm not a great coder, but I'll test what ever needs to be tested.

I think it Category is a terrific piece of work and very usable. I have tried many other methods of categorizing information, which were not successful. Category is consistently meeting my needs. I'm sure I haven't exhausted the many ways I could make use of it.

Contrary to the opinion that you have to get Category fully operational before your site goes live, the site I first implemented Category on had been live for many months before I switched. I had expectations the switch would require a lot of time and effort. I think it took about an hour and a half for nearly 400 pages, and that was mostly spent learning the Category interface and features.

When I made mistakes or wanted to change something, I had no problems getting the results I wanted. Deleting or moving content between categories was (and is) not a problem.

What I like best:

• I rely on Outline and its organizational features. The only thing that would be better with Outline would be something that would allow me to move content on the fly between containers and reorder the hierarchy. The current way to do that is cumbersome.
• My readers rely on the TOC pages that each container or category can generate. That is such a great usability feature! It is one of the best things about Category as far as I am concerned. The pages display cleanly, and I don't have to spend time fussing with the output. Stellar work!
• I rely on the Containers page. Clean, easy way to manage things. Could the page be improved? Yes. Is it a good start? Absolutely.

I would miss Category keenly if it wasn't available for 5.0.

N.B.: I can usability test and document if that would help maintain it.

cb

So what Drupal install do you have Jaza? Is it a clean install or hacked?

I'm running the latest stable release of Drupal (4.7.3), and the latest stable release of the category module. Both my Drupal install and my category module install are very clean, with no significant hacks made anywhere (and the few hacks that I have made are tracked carefully). Certainly no hacks without which the category module wouldn't work.

Do all pathauto placeholders work for you?

Yes. I honestly don't know what all the noise is about category_pathauto - it works fine for me.

Dupes?

No. Never seen one.

Have you tried deleting containers or categories?

Yes - and I've noticed that there are sometimes small problems with leftover menu items from category_menu. But nothing major, really.

i started using CAT module back ni the spring.. very frustrating as it seemed to constantly be spitting out erros about duplicate entires and other things.

i recently went back to this development site and thinking that CATs was still the right idea.. thought i would re-investigate my issues. I took a look and saw there have been a lot of bugs fixed and many new modules included wih thte CAT module. I couldnt update or install from 4.7.0 to 4.7.3 (tbales trying to be created that already existed but new columns required) so it seemed like the only way to get to newest code was to:

- remove old modules and CAT tables
- re-install

this of course would mean that i would lose all of my categorization; but couldnt see any other way

once i did this things seemed to be much cleaner - istarted to re-CAT my content and all was well...

but 2 days into it i am again seeing user warning:

Duplicate entry '15' for key 1 query: INSERT INTO category_menu_map (nid, mid) VALUES (15, 138) in G:\Inetpub\websites\liquidcms\includes\database.mysql.inc on line 120.

- also, can't seem to get views/cats generating any content or showing up in the views definition page

Despite my grief i think i must continue to use it - i need to categorize my content. But this is my own site - not sure how comfortable i would be using this to work on clients site as it is clearly still pretty buggy.

Just a thought - i read this and see that jaza doesnt seem to see the issues that others are seeing - perhaps that is ismply because he knows his way through the multitude of configuration options there are for setting things up - but the rest of us likely dont know the "oh, well don't do that if you have this module installed and select that option"... i am not sure that is the problem and i am not sure what i did that has starting causing all the duplicate entry errors again....

... but the topic of the post was.. is it usable?.. i shouldnt need to worry with everything i do that it is going to screw up my CAT and i will need to dump and re-categorize entire site..

and oh what i wouldnt give for someone to give a clear example of using views and categories :)

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Category ultimately solves things for a heirarchal site that took me months to try to solve using other Drupal modules and the core taxonomy module. I am using it on my own personal website, and for this purpose it makes Drupal much more user friendly and effective in providing content in a logically organized fashion. (Isn't this what good websites are supposed to do?)

What I really wish: that Jaza's category functionality gets adopted in the core of Drupal. There was mention of something like this in plans for an upcoming release of Drupal and it's a very good idea. While taxonomy works fine for very simple blogs (or looser groupings of content for community sites), when it comes to highly logical architecture (say for a site that represents the hierarchy of an organization) involving both the menu system, paths, bread crumbs, and node relationships (via categorization), there is simply too much complexity in implementing about ten modules to get things to actually work. Category represents needed core functionality in a future release of Drupal, if the Drupal CMS is to provide the flexibility needed to make it user friendly and exceptionally powerful. Perhaps the Drupal community should rally around Jaza and help him make his Category module into the future categorization system for Drupal 6.0.

I like the module. It works well. Just be careful "transforming" existing nodes into categories. Especially flexinodes experienced an odd problem during this process (the flexinode theming I created vanishes). And then the transform process didn't quite get my nodes back to their original state (good thing I backed up that database).

Category is usable. It just suffers from a very high percentage of unmarked duplicates in the issue queue. ;-)

Oh, and #8:
First problem: That's caused by the table accidentally (in my opinion) being a 1:N table instead of an N:M table... (look at the keys...) I know there's plenty copies of that issue in the queue....
Second problem: I think category_views is missing some of the necessary logic for that (not sure though).....

I really don't have much more to say, other than I am using Category in the development of a site, and I like it. Also, I am better at debugging it than using it, apparently. ;-)

My wishlist right now:

1. Unit testing
2. Cleanup in category_menu
3. People searching the queue before opening a new issue
4. More time to work on Category :-)

@bdragon:

My wishlist right now:

1. Unit testing
2. Cleanup in category_menu
3. People searching the queue before opening a new issue
4. More time to work on Category :-)

What a coincidence: that sounds awfully similar to my wishlist. ;)

You know, I can honestly say I've been working with the category module for months now, and I have run into a share of problems here and there. But then I step back and remember, I'm build a corporate level site from a Vanilla install of drupal. With little to no work and on minor issues along the way I've managed to no only implement the category module, but add security through permissions and roles, and work with all the functionality.

Duplicate paths? Never seen em.

Sure the module has some room for improvements(some of which I hacked in myself[automatic parents, security compatibility, mass file speeds]), but is it usuable? I still hold the same opinion I did 2 months ago. It's a sin not to use it.

Personally i think Category is actually a Usable and Indispensable module.
Compared to core Taxonomy these are IMO it's big big sweet points :

1. Categories (terms) and Containers (vocabularies) as nodes: is just not enough to be able to output the few lines of the 'description' as a category body like taxonomy_assoc.module actually does.
2. Category_display: very cool piece of code that lets us throw out in a snap customizable Tables Of Contents and optional nodes count.
3. Category_views: again great, i can now output lists of terms filed under a category the way i want, and i'm no more forced to display them just in alphabetical order like core Taxonomy does.
4. Straightforward site structuring tool: when i started learning Drupal, i crashed like many others against the complexity of organizing the structure of my site with Taxonomy and menus, not really easy concepts.. with Category i managed to get everything setted up pretty soon (and learn other Taxonomy concepts also :).

Then there are other nice features potentially great, but AFAIK NOT VERY USABLE/STABLE at the moment, at least on the more complex sites (particularly those who make use of Hidden containers and Distant parents), due to the bugs you see in the issue queue:

• Category_menu: to generate and keep updated menu trees reflecting your category structure on the fly (personally i disabled it for the moment).
• Category_transform: it offers bulk update functionality for all your categories

About Pathauto and Category_pathauto:
i had duplicate issues too, but was because i was using the "Category path settings" section (not belonging to the Category module as the title would suggest!) which NEEDS to be left completely blank, hope it helps!

Drupal 4.7.2 and Category v 1.116 here

Category is dead? Long life to Category!

As far as scalability goes:

I'm working on some significant speed optimizations over in http://drupal.org/node/87918 that will allow an arbitrary number of categories and levels, by doing more stuff at the database side, and storing the hierarchy in a smarter way.

I am so glad to see this topic here. I have been wondering the same thing for months. I really want to use category, but I am afraid of all the issues. I would be willing to chip in some money to see these issues organized and cleared up. I'm going to try another fresh install today using Drupal 4.7.3 Category 4.7.0 (looks like updated Oct 1 2006).

well, if nothing else glad to see I am not the only one that can't see categories as (currently) usable.

I have seen some of what you are referring to:

- menus are a nightmare; scared to touch anything without damaging them; even a re-save (with no edits) casues menu items to jump around

- trying to sort out views with cats - pretty sure this doenst work - simplest of sites 1 container, 1 cat, 1 node; set a view to filter on the term and i get nothing returned

I have been able to set up a few nodes using cats but and some things do seem to work correctly - but many things don't. I had a site that i think i organized badly and tried to go back to re-organize - gave up as things just seemed to irradict - have started to re-categorize from scratch and re-enter all my content

I get concept of hidden containers - but think they break views??? need to test more and document - at the moment even without them views seems busted - i guess i need to try views with cats off (i.e. old tax) and see if it works.

BUT... the concept is a good one (except i dont see a need for containers - not very OO). Maybe with a few less bugs...

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

I have been quiet so far, but as someone who has put category through the wringers for the last four months, I feel #17 and #18 sum up the state of the category module right now.

I am still betting on the category module for at least one large site and a smaller one, but the problem with views is scaring me. There has been a patch waiting for full scale views integration, but it still obviously works as Jaza has demonstrated on his new greenash site, so there's probably a gap in documentation, more than anything else, hopefully.

A bit less reassuring for nontechnical users is Jaza's statement that he employed a few hacks for his new site. One wonders if these hacks had anything to do with getting category to work as desired or how crucial they were to the success of the new greenash site.

I could be wrong, but it seems most of cat_menu's problems are due to the issues with the core menu system. You can reproduce the same problem of menu items getting scattered on deletion even without using the category module.

What else is dodgy?

• Taxonomy wrapper:
• It doesn't work out of the box with all taxonomy based modules. Tagadelic comes to mind.
• If you use the Image gallery module, you have to enable it after using taxonomy wrapper to convert taxonomy to categories. Otherwise, it works some times and doesn't at other times
• Recently, I found a problem where taxonomy wrapper didn't pick up all the terms a node is tagged with. Reverting to taxonomy showed all the terms
• Taxonomy paths are not redirected. This is noticeable in the simplenews module even after taxonomy wrapper is used. I think if category_legacy is used to import the newsletter terms, this will probably work better, as the import screen has a setting for redirecting legacy paths to node paths. But, this defeats the purpose of the wrapper module
• Category Outline has problems: Try changing the weights of the containers or cats in outline view and you end up with a mess. The last time I did it, I got the duplicate error entry. Worse, the node types associated with all the containers disappeared and were replaced with numbers such as 2, 3 etc. I took about six screenshots, but was too tired to submit an issue. I would like to test again with the latest module and report.
• Category Bulk edit has problems: Again, some bugs and unexpected behaviour for which I took screenshots. Will need to test again with the latest module

In sum, I want to continue to believe in the category module (I found myself coming back to it each time I tried taxonomy as an alternative), but like others, may be forced to use taxonomy in the short term pending resolution of these issues. Which is a shame considering the sheer beauty, power and scope of the module.

Do not forget views too!

The frustrating thing is that Category has so much potential. Simply said, there are so many things that Category can do that can't be done with simple taxonomy.

Hopefully Views isn't as broken as it seems to be. Without it, Category is pointless.

Attempting to get the views ball rolling at
http://drupal.org/node/57821

Generally speaking, I'm quite happy with Category. I love the TOC feature. I really wish it were possible to combine that with Views, but after all, Views isn't meant to do outlines.

I use Category with Taxonomy Wrapper and am using that with Glossary. It works BEAUTIFULLY for that.

For me, the whole transition from 4.6 to 4.7 felt like a leap from a Drupal with amazing potential to a Drupal that really worked, and I'm not sure how much of that feeling is wrapped up in Category. I pounded on combinations of Taxonomy modules for ages in 4.6 and never got quite what I wanted.

I do still experience some problems (and I'm not using pathauto at all, and I'm not using menus very much), but I'm immensely happy to have the functionality Category does give me.

I was quite worried to read about performance issues with huge numbers of categories, but it looks like there are even some promising approaches to solve that problem.

My main concern is whether Category will continue to be developed. I wish we had a fund to pay Jaza and Ramdak to keep slogging away on this. I'm really amazed - and grateful - for what's in Category now.

Kristi

Just a quick note for the people who still have problems with Category:

• About Category_menu issues:

  deleting either a category or container (can't remember which) resulted in quite significant collateral damage to other parts of the menu system necessitating a rebuild.

  Please note that Category_menu is an add-on to the core category/taxonomy functions, and is in no way required for the Category.module to work. Personally i "solved" all the problems it was causing simply not using it for now.

• About Category_pathauto issues:
  applied 2 patches at #24 and at #27 above to the latest 4.7 version of Category package which contains the category_get_parents fixes and category_pathauto bulk-edit works just fine now!

/subscribed

Is there a fix for "Duplicate Entry"? These are the errors i am getting.
Specs: Wamp, Drupal 4.7.4, php 5.x

user warning: Duplicate entry '1-377' for key 1 query: INSERT INTO term_node (nid, tid) VALUES (377, 1) in D:\..\..\..\includes\database.mysql.inc on line 121. 
user warning: Duplicate entry '1-377' for key 1 query: INSERT INTO term_node (nid, tid) VALUES (377, 1) in D:\..\..\..\includes\database.mysql.inc on line 121. 

I am trying to use category for a business listing, together with excerpt. So far so good, just when i update the node, i got the problems mentioned.
Any patches? Work around?

@hectr: This link might help:
http://drupal.org/node/78906#comment-152557

is there a post somewhere that tracks status of cat menus and breadcrumbs?

I have been using cat on my company site for a while now and had given up completely on the cat_menu module. I was actually getting very frustrated with drupal in general until i realized my frustration was soley based on my frustration with categories.. and then i realized that frustration was at least 80% just based on the havoc that menus was playing. Once i turned off breadcrumbs and made up a static menu - i was sleeping much better at night. (and could actually get some work done the next rather than spending entire day simply deleting duplicate menu entries that continually pop up).

BUT... the day has now come when i realize breadcrumbs and expandable menus are a requirement - woe is me to consider going back to cat_menu - HOWEVER - i have seen a lot of activity in these areas the past few weeks and thought perhaps it was time to re-investigate.

So, i have d/l-ed the latest cat module (Nov6/06) and re-enabled breadcrumbs in my template and held my breathe.. well go figure.. nothing works. Breadcrumbs are blank (i get HOME only) and i believe that my menus are being populated into the wrong menu every time i save a page - i.e. if i go to a category and hit save - regardless of where i have said to put the menu; it goes in my main Nav menu (which is possibly a default somewhere; but not what i selected) - also, every time i do this it adds another menu entry.

oh yes, and of course i now have the infamous "duplicate entry" error notice again.

OPTIMISTIC though - since i cant imagine all this pain is real considering i have seen so much effort going into this the past while... SO.. a few questions:

- is it possible that the "menu map", if there is such a thing, needs to be rebuilt?
- is there a way to remove the old one - again, if such a thing exists?
- is it necessary for me to go in and save every single page to get it to show on menu and breadcrumbs?
- is the only way to get this to work (if indeed it does) to reenter all my content from scratch - i have done this about 4 times to fix the mess that things have gotten into with categories - but cant not do it again!!
- is there a documented set of the dozen's of combinations of the cat settings that i need to make a simple menu/breadcrumb work - my site is not very complex structurally.? AND if there is why isnt this the default settings???
- does anyone have a block snippet for menus or breadcrumb code that i can simply use to make this work - in lieu of the cat_menu module working?

I dont really have an issue with trying the 100 or so combinations of options to see if i can get this all to work - but dont want to head down that path if it is known to be impossible.

sorry if i am sounding like i am just whining.. but i think this post topic sums it up for me.. "is cats ready for primetime" - and if not ; perhaps i need to go back to tax and write my own code to add to that???

optimistically,
Peter...

@ptalindstrom:

About menus, you could just turn cat_menu off and use core Drupal menu on the fly on node page.

About breadcrumbs you might look at the category_breadcrumb.module that you can find at http://drupal.org/node/75276 . Is not perfect yet (shouldn't show hidden containers in breadcrumb trails, and has a small problem with forum breadcrumbs down to node level), but with it i managed to have my best breadcrumbs ever while using Drupal.

cheers

thanks marcob,

Actually it was seeing the breadcrumb module post that prompted my earlier post - but from the sounds of it it wasnt quite ready yet - and of course i was wondering why there is a breadcrumb module in the first place when i though that was the cat_menu module???

so i tried out the std drupal on the fly to add a sub cat to the menu structure below the container that it is in - and it worked.. and i even got my breadcrumbs when i did this.. but a couple things:

the menu is collapsed until i am on the sub item (i.e. the category page) - perhaps this is expected functionality; but to me it would seem like you would want it to open when you are on the page above (i.e. the container) since then the user could see what's below

also, when i tried adding menu items for the categories in my other containers - i get no menu items generated (no errors, nothing.. just doesnt seem to do anything).. i assume this is something in the cat module which is somehow overriding this; but for the life of me as far as i can tell the 2 containers (the one that works and the one that doesnt) seem to be setup the same.

Actually i have a 3rd container as well- i tried it and it matches the 2nd... can not generate menu items "on the fly" for it.

I guess i will get around to trying out the breadcrumb module - but since i have 1 container that now has breadcrumbs.. perhaps i dont need it.. just need to figure out why i cant generate menus on the fly for all my containers.

so being really bugged by the idea that i couldnt see what was different between my 2 containers i went into database to see if i could find a difference - but first, to recap.. and show by example...

SITE NAV [menu title]
Services [cont]
-- Web Design [cat]

Portfolio [cont]
-- Web Sites [cat]
-- CMS Devel [cat]

- cat_menu is off (or i get new "Services" menu item in main NAV menu any time i edit the content - and a lot of grey hair trying to remove them all)

initially NO breadcrumbs and no sub menus since i simlpy made my SITE NAV menu manually with the containers.

so, at marcob's suggestion above i try adding "on the lfy" menu item for page Web Design - and it works and i get a breadcrumb and except for the fact that it doesn expand when i am at Services.. all is well

when i do same with Web Sites - i get nothing

Thinking that if i manually add a menu item it might wake things up - i manually add CMS Devel - it does show in the menu when i add it; repeat on the fly with Web Sites - still nothing

but since i cant seem to see any difference in any of the category tables for either the containers or the categories i guess i would have to say this might not be a cat bug... but no idea what esle could be making this not work???

ok, nevermind.. but it is 4AM here after all... so the reason that the menus on the fly were not being generated is becasue i never entered a Title for the menu item

but.. somewhat to my defence - i think this should likely be flagged as a required field - but i think it is difficult to do with existing forms api since the entire fieldset is not required and therefore you cant make one field required for when you decide to use that fieldset (when will they integrate Blueshoes into Drupal???.. lol)... but at the very least.. i suppose the menu item should just default to the page title???

After updating the category module with the latest release, Nov 11, i still get the "Duplicate entry" error. It's displayed only when i have freetagging checked.