Multiple Blogs Split By Section - Can They Share A Page?

dosa · Feb 20th 2020

Ok, since my "blog" is called newsroom, shouldn't the set be "newsroom" with categories under it? I'm trying a test and not seeing results.

JordinB · Feb 20th 2020

no, the perch code specifically looks for categories under a set called : blog.

Here is the code that does that:

Code

if (isset($opts['category'])) {
if (!is_array($opts['category'])) {
$opts['category'] = array($opts['category']);
}
if (PerchUtil::count($opts['category'])) {
foreach($opts['category'] as &$cat) {
if (strpos($cat, '/')===false) {
if (substr($cat, 0, 1)=='!') {
$cat = '!blog/'.substr($cat, 1).'/';
}else{
$cat = 'blog/'.$cat.'/';
}
}
}
}
}

Display More

So if you pass 'category' to the options, it loops over each category and will prepend 'blog' to the passed category. so if you pass: 'awards' from the query string through the 'category' option, the perch code will transform that to: blog/awards. So that path needs to exist in your categories.

dosa · Feb 20th 2020

Yay! You rock JordinB! Thank you for your diligence. I didn't know the "blog" Category name was hard-coded in Perch. I had renamed it to "newsroom" a while ago. Good to know.

So now I've got this:

1. Categories - a Set added called "Blog" with the "blog" slug and added a 'test' tag.

2. Changed the post.html call for the Categories to:

Code

<perch:categories id="tags" label="Choose Category Tags" order="3" set="Blog" >
<a href="/newsroom/category/<perch:category id="catPath" />" class="tag"><perch:category id="catTitle" /></a>
</perch:categories>

3. Opened a post, added the tag "test" to it.

4. Tried mysite.com/newsroom/category/test

Filter works Finally!

One more question you might know - I'd like to now add a dynamic title for the tag. How do I display the name of the tag from the URL in the page?

dosa · Feb 20th 2020

Another question in displaying the Categories. In categories/category.html I have:

Code

<perch:category id="catSlug" type="slug" for="catTitle" suppress="true" />
<a href="/newsroom/category/<perch:category id="catPath" />" class="tag"><perch:category id="catTitle" type="smarttext" label="Title" required="true" /></a>

But the link is using the real path to the Category, and not just the slug portion....so its using: mysite.com/newsroom/category/blog/the-slug instead of the re-mapped link. Thoughts on how to remove the /blog part of the link?

JordinB · Feb 20th 2020

Quote

i'd like to now add a dynamic title for the tag.

If i'm understanding, you'd like to display the category name that matches the slug "tag" ?

To do that you need to get the category from perch_category. Then either render a specific template or simply return the data and echo it in php.

Quote

But the link is using the real path to the Category, and not just the slug portion....so its using: mysite.com/newsroom/category/blog/the-slug instead of the re-mapped link. Thoughts on how to remove the /blog part of the link?

Don't use the 'catPath', rather use the 'catSlug' in the url. Don't forget that you can use <perch:showall> in a template to see all the variables and values available to you within the template.

dosa · Feb 20th 2020

Ok, "catSlug" did it for the busted link. Thanks for the show:all tip - I always forget that one.

For the Category page - I just want to show the current Category the user is on. I see the options for perch_category, but my code isn't getting there. Is there a snippet to show the current Category 'catTitle'?

JordinB · Feb 20th 2020

since you just have the slug, you'll need to build the category path, create simple template and do something like:

template: category_title.html

Code

<perch:category id="catTitle" />

which will simply just render the title... thats it.

you render it with:

Code

perch_category('blog/' . $categorySlug, ['template'=> 'category_title.html']);

Alternatively from your page (say it was in a h1 tag or something):

Code

echo "<h1>" . perch_category('blog/'.$categorySlug, ['skip-template'=>true], true)['catTitle'] . "</h1>";

but not sure if perch_category is going to return a 1 item indexed array...probably, i can't remember ... so in that case it would be:

Code

echo "<h1>" . perch_category('blog/'.$categorySlug, ['skip-template'=>true], true)[0]['catTitle'] . "</h1>";

Note the [0] to specify the first item returned.

dosa · Feb 20th 2020

Tried both, neither work

JordinB · Feb 20th 2020

what is the path you're passing to perch_category?

pass these options and dump the output then post here so we can see: ['skip-template' => true, 'raw'=> true]

dosa · Feb 20th 2020

Not sure what you mean. You have /blog in the code. Is that something I should change? I thought that's baked-in?

PHP

<div class="header-text"><?php perch_category('blog/' . $categorySlug, ['template'=> 'category_title.html']); ?> Articles</div>

Should say "Slug-Name Articles"

JordinB · Feb 20th 2020

the /blog is baked in for the perch_blog functions not perch_category functions. does the value of $categorySlug match what you see in the cms for the category you're trying to pull ?

Also what is your category_title.html look like ?

dosa · Feb 20th 2020

With debug on, I can see the template. I see the catSlug is correct, but that's not because of the line above. When I add it in, debug shows:

SQL

SELECT setID FROM cms1_category_sets WHERE setSlug='' LIMIT 1
[nil]SELECT main.* FROM cms1_categories main WHERE 1=1 AND (catPath='blog/') ORDER BY catTreePosition ASC
Using template: /templates/categories/category_title.html
[0]SELECT setID FROM cms1_category_sets WHERE setSlug='' LIMIT 1
[nil]SELECT main.* FROM cms1_categories main WHERE 1=1 AND (catPath='/') ORDER BY catTreePosition ASC

The categories do live in the /blog/ path, so why isn't it working? Should blog/ be switched to newsroom/category/ ?

The category_title.html:

Code

<perch:category id="catTitle" />

JordinB · Feb 21st 2020

From that sql it doest look like the concatenation of the category slug is working being passed to the perch_category function.

to save some time guessing, can you please post your php file from the beginning up to that perch_category function call? If you don’t want to post it, you can email it to me:

jbrown [at] cognetif dot com

dosa · Feb 25th 2020

Sorry I dropped the ball on this one. We launched the site anyway, so I am back to this tasks. I'll get that code to you soon. Thanks again for keeping this going.

dosa · Mar 4th 2020

hi JordinB (and maybe help from hus_hmd ) .....

I have picked this issue back up again and I'm not seeing a solution. What confuses me is that the page already has Category filtering working just fine....

PHP

<?php
$categorySlug = perch_get('categorySlug');
perch_blog_custom([
'category' => $categorySlug,
'cache' => false,
'count' => 12,
'sort' => 'postDateTime',
'template' => 'blog/post_in_column.html',
'sort-order' => 'DESC',
'paginate' => true,
]);
?>

Display More

So with that, shouldn't I be able to pull the name of the category it's displaying? I want to add it to the title of the page so it's clear what the user is filtering/viewing.

Code

<div class="header-text">NAME-OF-THE-CATEGORY-TITLE Articles</div>

hus_hmd · Mar 4th 2020

It sounds like the perch_blog_custom() is returning the categorised posts as expected. So that's good.

How are you outputting this?

HTML

<div class="header-text">NAME-OF-THE-CATEGORY-TITLE Articles</div>

dosa · Mar 4th 2020

That's my question for you guys. I'm not sure how to output the title of the Category in that simple HTML I have ready for it. Looking for the snippet to use in place of the "NAME-OF-THE-CATEGORY-TITLE" placeholder.

hus_hmd · Mar 5th 2020

What JordinB suggested sounds like it should work. From the debug message it shows you are not passing the category slug correctly. Make sure you assign a value to the variable $categorySlug before calling perch_category():

PHP

$categorySlug = perch_get('categorySlug');
perch_category('blog/' . $categorySlug, ['template'=> 'category_title.html']);
perch_blog_custom([
'category' => $categorySlug,
'cache' => false,
'count' => 12,
'sort' => 'postDateTime',
'template' => 'blog/post_in_column.html',
'sort-order' => 'DESC',
'paginate' => true,
]);

Display More

dosa · Mar 5th 2020

Success! That was the missing piece. Previous I had no results with....

PHP

<?php perch_category('blog/' . $categorySlug, ['template'=> 'category_title.html']); ?>

But when adding....

Code

$categorySlug = perch_get('categorySlug');

It finally makes the connection....

PHP

<?php $categorySlug = perch_get('categorySlug');perch_category('blog/' . $categorySlug, ['template'=> 'category_title.html']); ?>

Thank you both JordinB and hus_hmd for all the help! I hope this last post helps someone make the same edit.