Count Alias extension

This extension adds a {count_alias} and {total_results_alias} variable to the weblog tag.

You might wonder why 😉

Sometimes I wrap a weblog tag with a query tag, for example to fetch a category_id based on a url_segment. The problem with this trick is that the {count} and {total_results} variables return the values of the query tag, instead of the weblog tag inside.

In the following example {count} will always be 1:

{exp:query sql="SELECT cat_id FROM exp_categories WHERE group_id="1" AND cat_url_title = '{segment_2}' LIMIT 1"}

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="default_site" category="{cat_id}" dynamic="off"}
{count} - {count_alias}

{/exp:weblog:entries}

{/exp:query}

Of course this problem can be workd around using some PHP but then you might run into “PHP on input/output” problems, I did!

Using this extension and the {count_alias} and {total_results_alias} variables solves the problem.

Download link

Cheers!

(the same problem is true for the {switch="one|two"} variable but that one is unfortunately not accessable through an extension hook, but please correct me if I’m wrong)