Features

The categoryi module allows you to structure your site and to organize content
with categories. The features that help you to do this are:

Categories and containeris are created as nodes

All entities created by the category module are nodes. A node is the basic unit of data in Drupal, and having something exist as a node brings with it many advantages. For example: a node can have a body of content (which may be versioned); it can be commented on; it can have workflow settings; and it can have files attached to it. The category module defines two node types: a category and a container. These are roughly equivalent to the respective term and vocabulary entities in the taxonomy module, which are not node types. This page is itself a category node, and its parenti is a container node.

Content can be assigned to categories

Categories and containers are designed to be used for static, hierarchical content, much like book pages in the book module. However, categories can also be assigned (or tagged) to other nodes, such as stories and forum topics, much like terms can be assigned to nodes in the taxonomy module. Categories are generally assigned to dynamic content, although they can be assigned to any node, including other categories or containers. A category displays a list of all nodes that are assigned to it.

Categories can be structured within a container

You can organise your categories hierarchically within a container, and you can even give your categories multiple parent categories.

Categories and containers can be structured anywhere

If simply arranging categories within a container isn't enough for you, it's dead easy to give your containers one or more parents. A container can have any other category or container within your site as its parent. And if you're still not satisfied, it's even possible (although not usually necessary) to give a category some parents that are outside of its enclosing container. This allows you to create a complex site structure that matches almost any architecture you could possibly think up.

RSS feeds available for categories and containers

As with terms in the taxonomy module, all categories (and containers) that display a list of assigned nodeis have RSS feeds available.

Extensible architecture

The category module has been designed specifically to be easily extended by other modules. Most of this extensibility comes automatically, from using nodes as the basic unit of data for everything: using nodes provides the advantage of many flexible hooks and other programming interfaces being available. Where the node system falls short, the category module provides its own hooks to let other modules directly interact with it.

Wrapper modules for backwards-compatibility

The category module is based on both the book and the taxonomy modules. There are a large number of contributed Drupal modules that depend on interacting with these two modules (particularly with taxonomy) in order to function. Unfortunately, these contributed modules are not compatible with the category module, as it uses a new (and in many ways different) architecture. This is why the category module comes bundled with wrapperi modules for both book and taxonomy; the wrappers provide a compatibility layer, and thus bridge the gap between old and new. By using the wrappers, taxonomy- and book-dependent modules are able to communicate with the 'old modules' (at least, what they think are the old modules), but to actually interact with the new category system.

If you are looking for some visual illustrations of these features, have a look at the screenshots section of the site's image galleries.

You might also like to read about the features of the other modules in the category package. The features for each of these modules can be found in the pages below.