auto canonical urls, when are they regenerated ?

Hi,

They are generated automatically if:
- you have the "force canonical URLs on listings" setting activated in the HikaShop configuration
- you display a listing where there is a link to that product's product page
So for example, if you search for the product via the Joomla search module and there is a link to that product page needed in the results listing, the system will generate it there. If you go on the products listing where that product is displayed, it will also generate the link.
And once the link is generated, the system will use it all the time.

How could I create a listing when I do not know the links to the product pages ? Maybe I missed here something

You must be missing something yes.
A product page link is for example this:
demo.hikashop.com/index.php/en/hikashop/...with-multiple-images
A products listing page link is for example this:
demo.hikashop.com/index.php/en/hikashop/...sting/display-in-div
You don't need to know the link to the product page to be able to create the products listing page link.
As you already know, you can create just link via the Joomla menu manager and selecting the type "HikaShop products listing" or HikaShop categories listing". The resulting link will be added to your menu and when you click on it, you'll see a listing of your products. When that listing of products is generated, HikaShop will take the canonical URL to add the product page link to the listing, and if empty, it will generate it automatically.

The generated link depends on where you are displaying the link.
If you are displaying it in a module, then it will use the menu item that you selected in the "menu" setting of the module.
If you are displaying it in a menu item, then it will use that menu item.

The structure of a product page URL is like that:

/index.php/{alias of the current menu item}/{SEF product name}/{alias of the product}

{alias of the current menu item} comes from Joomla. It can't be changed by HikaShop.
{SEF product name} comes from the setting of the same name in the HikaShop configuration and can be changed if you want or even removed.
{alias of the product} comes from the alias of the product in the product edition page.
So as you can see, each of these can be changed on your end to match your needs.
If you see "hikashop-menu-for-products-listing" in the URL, then it means that this link was generated from somewhere where you selected the menu item with that alias in the "menu" setting so that HikaShop would display the listing with that menu item.

The URL generation could indeed be improved, but that's not something we can do much about it as it depends on the Joomla routing system. We already added many options to allow merchants to create URLs that better match their needs.

Please remember that HikaShop is not a SEF extension and that the role of the canonical URL setting isn't for you to be able to have whatever structure of URLs you want. If you want that, then you need to use a SEF extension like SH404SEF and configure URL aliases for the product pages so that you can really have the URLs you want without any restriction put in place by the Joomla SEF system.

Hi,

When you access a page that is displayed by HikaShop, the current menu item has to be a HikaShop type.
If not, the Joomla SEF system will display a 404 error.
The page /index.php/commander on your website is not a page displayed by HikaShop, it is a page displayed by com_content (a Joomla article) which itself has a module to display the products.
So when you click on a product of that module, you can't tell HikaShop to stay on the current menu item as com_content is not able to display a HikaShop product page. That's why there is this "menu" setting in the module which changes the current menu of the URLs of the products in that module to the menu item "Produits par catégorie" so that the links are valid.
Hence, when you arrive on the product page, you are on the "Produits par catégorie" menu item.
And the Joomla breadcrumb system automatically display the parents of the current menu item and the current menu item links, and then HikaShop can add links to the breadcrumb.
So when you have the breacrumb "Accueil Commander Produits par catégorie Étude Thermique RT 2012 complète", the part "Accueil Commander Produits par catégorie" is handled automatically by Joomla and HikaShop only adds the last part.
Which means that removing the part "Produits par catégorie" is not possible. If you select "Commander" instead of "Produits par catégorie" in the menu setting of your module, the Joomla SEF system will probably display an error when you try to click on a product link.
A solution would be to use a menu item of the type "HikaShop products listing" for your "Commander" menu item so that you would stay on the same menu item when you click on a link of the products listing there.
But then you wouldn't be able to customize it the way you did.
As you can see, you're stuck with the SEF system of Joomla, not because of HikaShop.

Hi,

In your case, I would have used some kind of form extension to build the workflow so that at the end of the 4 steps, it would redirect to the add to cart link of a HikaShop product with custom item fields where the data from the form extension would be stored.
That link would add the product in the cart with the data of the form extension, and then redirect to the checkout.

That way, it's transparent for the customer, you keep HikaShop for all the cart/checkout/payment/order/invoice system, and you have all the freedom you want for the workflow you need.

Regarding the add to cart link with custom item fields, you can read more about it here:
www.hikashop.com/forum/2-general-talk-ab...-product-fields.html
And if you need to change the price of the product in the cart based on what the customer entered in the form extension workflow, you can develop a small price override plugin like we have with the donation plugin:
demo.hikashop.com/index.php/en/hikashop/...t-page/donation-page