How to build hierarchy?

By Alexandr-1 on 18 Mar 2004 at 08:40 UTC

Good day, Drupal community!
I'm interested in implementing travel guide with drupal but for now dont know how it can be done right way.
For example i need to publish information about COUNTRIES, CITIES, RIVERS, HOTELS, THEATER e.t.c
Each HOTEL located in CITY. CITY located in COUNTRY.

I want to have next hierarchy

America
..|
..|--countries
..|.....|
..|.....|--country-USA.-.(page.about.USA.there)
..|.....|.....|
..|.....|.....|--cities
..|.....|.....|.....|
..|.....|.....|.....|--city-NY.-.(page.about.NY.there)
..|.....|.....|.....|.....|
..|.....|.....|.....|.....|--hotels
..|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|
..|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|--NY_hotel1.-.(page.about.hotel.there)
..|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|--NY_hotel2.-.(page.about.hotel.there)
..|.....|.....|.....|.....|
..|.....|.....|.....|.....|--theaters
..|.....|.....|.....|...........|
..|.....|.....|.....|...........|--NY_theater1.-.(page.about.theater.there)
..|.....|.....|.....|...........|--NY_theater2.-.(page.about.theater.there)
..|.....|.....|.....|
..|.....|.....|.....|--city-SF.-.(page.about.SF.there)
..|.....|.....|...........|
..|.....|.....|...........|--hotels
..|.....|.....|.................|
..|.....|.....|.................|--SF_hotel1.-.(page.about.hotel.there)
..|.....|.....|.................|--SF_hotel2.-.(page.about.hotel.there)
..|.....|.....|
..|.....|.....|--rivers
..|.....|...........|
..|.....|...........|--river-Missipi.-.(page.about.Missipi.there)
..|.....|.................|
..|.....|.................|--harbours
..|.....|.......................|
..|.....|.......................|--Missipi_harbour1.-.(page.about.harbour.there)
..|.....|.......................|--Missipi_harbour2.-.(page.about.harbour.there)
..|.....|
..|.....|
..|.....|
..|.....|--country-Canada.-.(page.about.Canada.there)
..|.....|.....|
..|.....|.....|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
..|
Europe
..|
..|--countries
..|.....|
..|.....|--country-Geramany.-.(page.about.Geramany.there)
..|.....|.......|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
..|.....|
..|.....|--country-France.-.(page.about.France.there)
..|.....|.......|

Please help me understand how to implement this with drupal. Shoul i use taxonomy or any module?
If taxonomy, then what is vocabularies, what is term's and what is node for example above?

Comments

Taxonomy

hrkaspar commented 18 March 2004 at 09:29

Vocabularies are "top level". Would be Europe, America, Asia etc. Terms would be anything below. Terms can contain other terms, (Germany=Term, Berlin= term below Germany. Frankfurt term below Germany.), and terms can contain nodes, eg. articles about a town (node in Berlin).

The clever thing about taxonomy is that you can have a seperate vocabulary containing terms "Hotels" or "Tourist attractions". Then you can attach a node to BOTH term Berlin AND term Tourist attraction. Ex an article about Brandenburger Tor.

This allows for a complex structure and simple maintainance at the same time.

Brgds
Kaspar

Drupal på dansk : http://drupal.tredive.dk/
My 30th coming up: http://www.tredive.dk/

Thanks, but what about CITIES

Alexandr-1 commented 18 March 2004 at 09:40

Thanks, but what about CITIES, COUNTRIES...?
Is this vocabularies?

Depends

hrkaspar commented 18 March 2004 at 09:56

That depends on the content. They will define the structure of your site. A vocabulary can not contain other vocabs., but can contain terms, which in term can hold other terms or nodes (articles). Articles and terms can also relate to "related" terms in the same vocab or another vocab.
The structure you illustrated looks like America should be a vocab. and Europe should be a vocab. Anything "below" this is a term or a node. You could create a vocab. for each country, but then you would lack the mother/child structure.

Europe (voca.) Germany (term) Berlin (term) About Berlin: Node.
---------------Denmark (term) Copenhagen (term) Tivoli (term) About Tivoli (node)

Ps. Im am sure, you have already read the document explaining taxonmy, but in case you missed it: Taxonomy (alias sections and categories)

Drupal på dansk : http://drupal.tredive.dk/
My 30th coming up: http://www.tredive.dk/

Faceted metadata

Gunnar Langemark@www.langemark.com commented 18 March 2004 at 10:58

What you need is a diferent approach. Faceted Metadata is much better to handle your kind of information.

You have several small taxonomies - hierarchical or not:

Geography (or location): Hierarchi with Continents, Countries etc.
(Could be split into Countries, Cities, Rivers, etc)
Entertainment: Theatres, Amusement Parks, Bars, Cafés, Restaurants
Accommodation: Hotel, B&B,
Brands: Hilton, McDonald, etc....
It makes it much easier to admister, to set up and to search on your site.

For instance the Hilton Hotel in Paris France would be marked with "Hotel" in the accomodation vocabulary, with "Hilton" in the brands vocabulary, with "France" in the countries vocabulary and with "Paris" in the cities vocabulary.

Now it would be much easier to maintain a set of categories. There is only ONE Hilton category, ONE Paris category, ONE Hotel category.
And not - as in a single hierarchical taxonomy - a large number of Hotels categories - in all cities actually.

Search would be simple too: If you want to cruise the "Danube" - you can find all Hotels on the Danube - regardless of country.

SO: "Vocabulary" is a list of "terms". There can be many vocabularies and they can be used simultaneously.
"Terms" are categories or "keywords".
A "Taxonomy" is a set of terms, vocabularies etc which covers a "domain" - like the main subject of your site: The domain of "Travel Guides".

"Nodes" are the content items. That means that it is the "Pages" on your site - the articles, blog posts, etc.

"Facets" are the different ways you can characterize your content: You can organize by country, city, type of location etc.
You can make a facet called "budget" and have categories like: "shoestring", "business", "family", "royal". It could go for both accommodation and entertainment etc.

Hope I make sense.
This is actually the real strenght of Drupal showing off here! You do not need to build a VAST set of hierarchically organised categories. You can build small sets - and make both your work and the users work easier.

Best
Gunnar

Dropping in from Langemarks Cafe.

thanks to hrkaspar and Gunna

Alexandr-1 commented 18 March 2004 at 12:28

thanks to hrkaspar and Gunnar Langemar.
Your comment very useful for me and make me cleaner look about drupal's taxonomy.
so now i'm creating number of vocabs. as in yours examples this will be much better then hiearchy i think.
but in my first post i told not only about data structure, but about navigation too. Can i create navigation menu like hierarchy in my first post on data organized as your comments without hacking Drupal?
Is there modules to do this?

Regards

Hmm

Gunnar Langemark@www.langemark.com commented 18 March 2004 at 14:20

Normal taxonomy menu would break content down to a number of seperate menus.
I don't know the answer. Probably not right out of the box.
You need a single hierarchy in the menu - while at the same time maintaining the site using a number of facet oriented vocabularies.

Anyone with a clear answer?

Dropping in from Langemarks Cafe.

wow, thats very interesting a

kennysto commented 13 July 2004 at 16:19

wow, thats very interesting and has helped me work out (on paper at least) how i want to organise the info on my site. Of course the next step is to practicaly create a navigation/selection system that allows users of the site to find what they want. I suppose taxonomy_browser module comes closest to this? But the big problem is if one of your facets is very long (or with a hierarchy) it becomes a loooooooooong list.

I was looking at the wine demo at: http://facetmap.com/demo/browse.jsp?map=

I like how the regions list becomes more and more specific as you tunnel down. I suppose this is alike having a hierarchy in a vocubulary.