Codeigniter add multiple category to a course (Academy-LMS) - php

Question

I am using Academy LMS Source code is in Github
it's a Learning Management system and it is designed to have one category per course
I want to add multiple categories to one course
In /controllers/API.php I have
// Fetch all the categories
public function categories_get($category_id = "") {
$categories = array();
$categories = $this->api_model->categories_get($category_id);
$this->set_response($categories, REST_Controller::HTTP_OK);
}
// Fetch all the courses belong to a certain category
public function category_wise_course_get() {
$category_id = $_GET['category_id'];
$courses = $this->api_model->category_wise_course_get($category_id);
$this->set_response($courses, REST_Controller::HTTP_OK);
}
then in /models/Api_model.php, I have
// Get categories
public function categories_get($category_id)
{
if ($category_id != "") {
$this->db->where('id', $category_id);
}
$this->db->where('parent', 0);
$categories = $this->db->get('category')->result_array();
foreach ($categories as $key => $category) {
$categories[$key]['thumbnail'] = $this->get_image('category_thumbnail', $category['thumbnail']);
$categories[$key]['number_of_courses'] = $this->crud_model->get_category_wise_courses($category['id'])->num_rows();
}
return $categories;
}
// Get category wise courses
public function category_wise_course_get($category_id)
{
$category_details = $this->crud_model->get_category_details_by_id($category_id)->row_array();
if ($category_details['parent'] > 0) {
$this->db->where('sub_category_id', $category_id);
} else {
$this->db->where('category_id', $category_id);
}
$this->db->where('status', 'active');
$courses = $this->db->get('course')->result_array();
// This block of codes return the required data of courses
$result = array();
$result = $this->course_data($courses);
return $result;
}
then in /model/Crud_model.php, I got
public function get_category_details_by_id($id)
{
return $this->db->get_where('category', array('id' => $id));
}
function get_category_wise_courses($category_id = "")
{
$category_details = $this->get_category_details_by_id($category_id)->row_array();
if ($category_details['parent'] > 0) {
$this->db->where('sub_category_id', $category_id);
} else {
$this->db->where('category_id', $category_id);
}
$this->db->where('status', 'active');
return $this->db->get('course');
}
in SQL course table has a column named category_id int(11) which stores one category per course I've changed it to TEXT format and put comma-separated values like 1,2,3 and used the ways like
$this->db->where_in('category_id',$category_id)
and
$this->db->like('category_id',$category_id)
and
$this->db->where("FIND_IN_SET(".$category_id.",category_id) >", 0);
and got no result I just need courses to have comma-separated values in the category_id column
Simply, I want courses to have multiple categories
DB tables
https://pasteboard.co/JNSxO2kz.png
course table
https://pasteboard.co/JNSy7g0.png
category table
https://pasteboard.co/JNSyhlk.png
category_id table (Mapping Table suggested by #micheal-la-ferla )
https://pasteboard.co/JNSyGGn.png
anybody could help?

Answer 1

The way Academy-LMS is designed, it lets you only add 1 category per course. It limits the user and it can be frustrating.
One workaround which could work is to create a new mapping table with 3 columns as follows:
Field Name | Data Type
------------+------------------
ID | int(11)
Course ID | int(11)
Category ID | int(11)
Obviously you need to have the permission to create new tables to use this workaround. Not sure if this is possible for your implementation of Academy-LMS.
The step above will essentially create a one to many relationship between the course and the category, so that 1 course can then be part of multiple categories. (In reality, this would be a many to many relationship since I am assuming that a category may obviously belong to multiple courses).
Therefore the database design will be similar to the one I created here.
If you implement this change, you would then need to make the following changes to the code you have:
// Get categories
public function categories_get($category_id)
{
if ($category_id != "") {
$this->db->where('category_id', $category_id);
}
$this->db->where('parent', 0);
$categories = $this->db->get('course_id')->result_array();
foreach ($categories as $key => $category) {
$categories[$key]['thumbnail'] = $this->get_image('category_thumbnail', $category['thumbnail']);
$categories[$key]['number_of_courses'] = $this->crud_model->get_category_wise_courses($category['id'])->num_rows();
}
return $categories;
}
Essentially, what I did here was replace the parent in the categories with category_id and category with course_id. Not sure if these are correct. You will need to review these when reading from the database as I never used CodeIgniter.