How can I display entries from a category but hide entries belonging to it's child categories

Question

I have product categories with 3+ levels, sometimes a product is assigned to the second level, sometimes it's assigned to level 3, so a category may have sub categories with products, and products.

I can't figure out how to display the just products in a category if that category also has child categories with products, EE insists on displaying all the products from the child categories too.

I have tried {if parent_id != {cat_id}} (cat_id taken from a query using the url to filter), no luck as EE doesn't seem to diffentiate between direct parents and grand-parents or higher.

How can I filter out the products from the child categories?

Answer 1

If you have this Auto-assign Category Parents set to 'Yes' in Admin > Channel Administration > Global Preferences, then all entries in child categories will automatically be assigned to the parent categories too. Set to 'no' to disable this behaviour.