Using category group in URLs - extracting this variable is proving tricky...

Hi joelene,

Sorry to see your post has gone unanswered for almost a week.

I had basically the exact same problem and I also had to override EE’s simple default URL format. Originally I thought that was provided for by parameters of the {exp:weblog:entries} tag such as dynamic=”off”, category, entry_id, and url_title, but it has proved to be a pain in the neck. I’ve done what I need to do, but it hasn’t been as straighforward as I anticipated.

The big problems I’ve encountered are:

• Uncertainty about the ability to supply parameter values for tags (e.g. {exp:weblog:entries}) using plugins, without which EE is only a fraction as usable (for a developer) as it could be. I don’t understand why EllisLab doesn’t document the use of plugins for parameter values, but this thread seems to give it the official seal of “approval”.

• Behavior of {exp:weblog:entries} doesn’t always make sense (e.g. not tracking views, although I was told in that thread that that would be fixed in 1.6, more or less) when manually feeding it parameters (such as ‘url_title’).

I use URLs like /template_group/template/C10/url-title on my site. I need to embed the category ID in the URL of each request to properly generate category sensitive navigation and other elements of the pages.

There are two techniques I’ve used:

• Supplying the values for {exp:weblog:entries} parameters using my plugin.

e.g.

{exp:weblog:entries dynamic="off" url_title="{exp:my_plugin:get_url_title}" parse="inward"}

...

{/exp:weblog:entries}

• Setting variables in path.php. See Path.php Global Variables

To use this technique, you might do something like:

/* In path.php */

$request_URI = explode( "/", trim( $_SERVER[ 'REQUEST_URI' ], "/" ) );

$global_vars[ 'my_category_id' ] = $request_URI[2];

$global_vars[ 'my_url_title' ] = $request_URI[3];




{!-- In your template --}

{exp:weblog:entries dynamic="off" url_title="{my_url_title}"}

...

{/exp:weblog:entries}

But if your requirements are that simple, you could probably skip setting the variables in path.php and do something like this:

{exp:weblog:entries dynamic="off" url_title="{segment_4}"}

...

{/exp:weblog:entries}

So using your URL format (I’m not 100% what each segment in your URLs represents, so don’t take this too literally):

{!-- In your templates --}

Template group: {segment_1}

Template / category group: {segment_2}

Category: {segment_3}

URL title: {segment_4}




/*

In plugin code

($IN is a global variable)

*/

$template_group = $IN->fetch_uri_segment( 1 );

$template = $IN->fetch_uri_segment( 2 );

$category = $IN->fetch_uri_segment( 3 );

$url_title = $IN->fetch_uri_segment( 4 );

Hope this helps.

Hello - thank you very much for all that (please excuse my lack of a reply - I have been on holiday) I have done it a slightly more convoluted route but it works quite well for me in that it mirrors the way multiple weblogs would work - as my parent categories dont change I have hard coded these in an array and used a query to find the category name and description from the entry_id which then writes the path into the urls. The templates have

category=”<?php $query = $DB->query(“SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM exp_categories WHERE parent_id = $my_category_id ORDER BY cat_name”);

if ($query->num_rows > 0)
{
foreach($query->result as $row)
    {
        echo $row['cat_id']."|";
    }
}?>"

to generate a list of the entries for a specific parent id which in effect are the subcategories - it is more complicated that I have explained but if anyone really wanted to know then I can go into more detail - suffice to say it works and I can use the url format

www.mysite.com/the-parent-category-group/the-category-name/the-url-title

One glorious day this will be the format of all categories and there will be much rejoicing