Creating a store with Structure and multiple levels of categories in the URL

Question

Looking for some general advice, I'm looking to build a store that has 1,500 products. These products are broken down into 40 or so categories, can be in multiple categories and I want to be able to nest these categories in the URL, for example I want to be able to do the following:

site.com/category_parent/category_child/category_childs_child/product_name/
site.com/category_parent/category_child/product_name/
site.com/category_parent/product_name/

The trouble I have is that ExpressionEngines built in categories don't allow this, the only option is to have:

site.com/categories/category_name/product_name/

And if i'm linking to a product from the homepage (without being on a category listing page) you'll end up on:

site.com/product_name

This all gets pretty confusing from a users point of view as the URL system doesn't have any consistency. Is there any options for me to get the URLs working as I want or is ExpressionEngine simply the wrong system for the job?

I've been thinking it might be possible by using the add-on freebie but still can't workout how i'd manage the different levels of category and the fact that there isn't a fixed depth of category… some pages could have 4 levels of categories some only 1.

Would really appreciate someone else's thoughts on this matter, thanks!

Answer 1

This is exactly what you want http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/category-url

Answer 2

You might consider using the segment variables and Mark Croxton's highly-regarded ifelse plugin.

You can start checking at the highest possible number of segments and work your way back, of course.

Answer 3

Subsegment works well with Structure. Subsegment allows you to split a url segment into a subsegments array and find any subsegment.

http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/subsegment