Possible to assign fields (or an image) to a category?

Question

I'm just getting to grips with Craft but it seems very flexible. To try it out I have set up a structure to store some sample products. These products have an image, text, tags and belong to a category (E.g cakes). I can sort and output products, display in groups even sort by tag - brilliant.

One thing I struggling with is how assign a image and other fields to the category? So that I can then have a page with a list of categories each with an image and text Or even output a single category that I want to highlight on another page?

Should this be a "parent" entry? If so how do I assign a set of fields to the parent item but not the child?

Possibly I am thinking about approaching this the wrong way and I should create a "types" structure in which the entries have a required field that is the "category" and use this to search for any products of matching category?

Confused - any pointers appreciated.

Answer 1

The Craft Categories page is very useful.

To assign an entry to a category, create a category field, and require it in the entry type (you are probably already doing this).

When you create a Category Group you can edit the field layout, and add an image field and a text field for the category. Then to edit that content, double click on the category itself (from the right-side category menu), and you will get a modal dialog where you can edit the text and image.

To list the categories in myCategoryGroup you do:

{% set categories = craft.category.group('myCategoryGroup') %}
{% for cat in categories %}
  {{cat.title}} - {{cat.image}} {# assuming image is the name of the image field #
{% endfor %}

Craft site has an article on How do I list the entries related to a category?.