Setting up multiple catalogs

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Setting up multiple catalogs

MiniVend has multiple catalog capability, and therefore breaks the configuration files into two pieces. One is global (minivend.cfg) and affects every catalog running under it. The other (catalog.cfg) is specific to an individual catalog, and has no effect on other catalogs.

The global minivend.cfg file is located in the main MiniVend directory, and has only a few server-wide configuration parameters. The most important is the Catalog directive, which defines the catalogs will be created at server startup. The Catalog directive is often set up by the makecat program, which can be used to configure a catalog.

Here is an example Catalog directive:

 Catalog simple /home/catalogs/simple /cgi-bin/simple /secure-bin/simple

simple: The catalog identifier, used as the name of the catalog on command lines. In the supplied demo configuration this would be simple. The identifier can contain characters from the set [A-Za-z0-9_].
/home/catalogs/simple: The directory where the catalog.cfg file may be found, and usually the directory where pages and databases are kept.
/cgi-bin/simple /secure-bin/simple: The script names which, when containing a MiniVend link program, will cause that catalog to be called. At least one must be supplied, and the same name may not be used for more than one catalog unless the FullURL directive is specified, in which case the parameter may be specified as www.yourcompany.com/cgi-bin/simple and www.theirs.com/cgi-bin/simple may call a different catalog.

There may also be SubCatalog directives:

  SubCatalog easy simple /home/catalogs/simple /cgi-bin/easy

easy: The name of the subcatalog, which also controls the name of the subcatalog configuration file -- in this case easy.cfg.
simple: The name of the base configuration, which will be the basis for the catalog. Parameters in the easy.cfg file that are different will override those in the catalog.cfg file for the base configuration.

The remaining parameters are as in the Catalog directive.

Additional minivend.cfg parameters set up administrative parameters that are catalog wide -- see Server Configuration File for details on each of these.

Each catalog can be completely independent, with different databases -- or catalogs can share any or all pages, databases, and session files. This means that several catalogs can share the same information, allowing ``virtual malls''.