HOWTO: Proper news pagination (with page numbers!)

Daniel15 · **Posted:** Tue Feb 20, 2007 10:33 am

I've been looking around for how to do pagination with the News module (for an archive page), but didn't find anything. So, I decided to try it myself, based on bits and pieces I found on this forum :). Since there's not much documentation on this, I though I should post my solution here (I'll post it to the Wiki eventually ;))

Although I'm a bit experienced with Smarty (I used it to power my site), I'm still new to CMS Made Simple, so please tell me if I did anything wrong. I had no idea how to approach this, so I've tried my best ;)

Create a new User Defined Tag called "newsindex" (or similar), and place the following into it:

Code:

global $gCms;

// Current page number
$pagenum = isset($_REQUEST['pagenum']) ? $_REQUEST['pagenum'] : 1;
// Number of items per page
$number = $params['number'];

// Base URL for everything (page number is appended to this)
$base_url = $next_uri = 'index.php?page=' . $gCms->variables['page_name'] . '&pagenum=';
// Various URL's
$next_uri = $base_url . ($pagenum + 1);
$prev_uri = $base_url . ($pagenum - 1);

// Get the page count
$db =& $gCms->db;
$query = "SELECT COUNT(news_id) AS count FROM " . cms_db_prefix() . "module_news";
$dbresult = $db->Execute($query);
$row = $dbresult->FetchRow();
$numOfArticles = $row['count'];

// Assign some stuff
$smarty->assign('news_start', ($number * ($pagenum - 1)));
$smarty->assign('news_number', $number);
$smarty->assign('news_base_url', $base_url);
$smarty->assign('news_next_url', $next_uri);
$smarty->assign('news_prev_url', $prev_uri);
$smarty->assign('news_num_articles', $numOfArticles);
$smarty->assign('news_pages', ceil($numOfArticles / $number));
$smarty->assign('news_curr_page', $pagenum);

Then, on a Content Page (wherever you want the news archive to appear), place the following:

Code:

{newsindex number='10'}

{cms_module module='news' number=$news_number start=$news_start}
{if $news_curr_page > 1}
   <a href="{$news_prev_url}">Back</a>
{/if} 

{section name=pagenum start=0 loop=$news_pages}
   {if $smarty.section.pagenum.index+1 == $news_curr_page}
      <b>[ {$smarty.section.pagenum.index+1} ]</b>
   {else}
      <a href="{$news_base_url}{$smarty.section.pagenum.index+1}">{$smarty.section.pagenum.index+1}</a>
   {/if}
{/section}

{if $news_curr_page < $news_pages}
   <a href="{$news_next_url}">Next</a>
{/if}

Change "newsindex" above, depending on what you called the tag. Also, you may change number="10" to the number of items you'd like to display per page.

The URL's will look a bit like index.php?page=news&pagenum=2. If you're using friendly URL's with a .htm extension, you may change:

Code:

$base_url = $next_uri = 'index.php?page=' . $gCms->variables['page_name'] . '&pagenum=';

to

Code:

$base_url = $gCms->variables['page_name'] . '.htm?pagenum=';

This will make the URL's slightly nicer, but still a bit ugly (news.htm?pagenum=2. With a slight change to the .htaccess file, you'll be able to make the URL's even nicer (something like news-2.htm)... I'll post details on this later

Edit: Fixed typo in code

cyberman · **Posted:** Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:00 pm

Daniel15 wrote:

So, I decided to try it myself, based on bits and pieces I found on this forum

.

Thanx for that solution ...

Quote:

I though I should post my solution here (I'll post it to the Wiki eventually

)

Nice idea

...

gazoo · **Posted:** Tue Feb 20, 2007 4:26 pm

Daniel15, this is an excellent piece of code. Great work!

I recently posted a topic about pagination of news articles on the backend or from within the admin interface.
http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/topic,10199.0.html

I've made reference to your post but I was also hoping that with your expertise, you might be able to also come up with a routine or adapt your code to help for pagination of news articles on the backend.

I look forward to your thoughts on this.

Thanks!
Gazoo

Daniel15 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:01 am

Quote:

I've made reference to your post but I was also hoping that with your expertise, you might be able to also come up with a routine or adapt your code to help for pagination of news articles on the backend.

I haven't really looked at the CMS Made Simple code in much detail, so I'm not quite sure how to do this. I may have a look at it later, but my free time is quite limited (due to school).

EDIT: Take a look at my reply to that topic

brdon · **Posted:** Thu Feb 22, 2007 2:19 am

Do you have a site where I can see it in action? Great work!

Daniel15 · **Posted:** Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:33 am

While I don't have a site with it in action (as I'm still converting www.dansoftaustralia.net over to CMS Made Simple), I can show you some screenshots

.

First page:

Second page:

.

I'll eventually work on month-based pagination (one page for each month), but this will require some coding. I'm aiming to get something similar to what I've got at http://www.dansoftaustralia.net/ (it's flat-file at the moment. I coded it before learning MySQL, so all the news is in one large PHP array

. The current archive just loops through the array, and checks if the month and year selected equal that of the news article).

mahjong · **Joined:** Mon Jun 12, 2006 6:00 pm **Posts:** 227

There is only one big problem with this otherwise ingenious script. The total count doesn't take into account news categories and expiration dates. For instance, I need to display news of the past for members (tagged with the "member" category) on an archives page.

Code:

{newsindex number='10'}

{cms_module module=CustomContent}
{if $customcontent_loggedin}
  {if $customcontent_memberof_member}
      {cms_module module="news" category="general,member" showarchive="true" number=$news_number start=$news_start}
  {else}
      {cms_module module="news" category="general" showarchive="true" number=$news_number start=$news_start}
{/if}

Daniel15 · **Posted:** Fri Feb 23, 2007 6:46 am

mahjong wrote:

There is only one big problem with this otherwise ingenious script. The total count doesn't take into account news categories and expiration dates. For instance, I need to display news of the past for members (tagged with the "member" category) on an archives page.

Code:

{newsindex number='10'}

{cms_module module=CustomContent}
{if $customcontent_loggedin}
  {if $customcontent_memberof_member}
      {cms_module module="news" category="general,member" showarchive="true" number=$news_number start=$news_start}
  {else}
      {cms_module module="news" category="general" showarchive="true" number=$news_number start=$news_start}
{/if}

Oops, I forgot about that...
Unfortunately, I have almost no experience with CMS Made Simple, and don't really know how to take those factors into account (I don't have the time to look through the code, unfortunately). Anyone else know how to do this?

Vin · **Joined:** Sun Jan 07, 2007 8:54 pm **Posts:** 267

It's about time someone posted the solution of the count of news depending on a news category and expiration date. I had in mind to figure the problem out earlier, but didn't have time - until now. So, here is my version of the news pagination UDT:

Code:

global $gCms, $number;

$start = ($_REQUEST['start']) ? $_REQUEST['start'] : $params['start'];
$number = ($_REQUEST['number']) ? $_REQUEST['number'] : $params['number'];

function join_uri($middle)
{ 
  global $gCms, $number;
   return 'index.php?page=' . $gCms->variables['page_name'] . '&start=' . $middle . '&number=' . $number;
} 
$next_uri = join_uri($start + $number);
$prev_uri = join_uri($start - $number);

$smarty->assign('news_start', $start);
$smarty->assign('news_number', $number);
$smarty->assign('news_next_url', $next_uri);
$smarty->assign('news_prev_url', $prev_uri);

$db = &$gCms->db;
$tables=cms_db_prefix().'module_news';
$cond='';
if (isset($params['count_expired'])) {
  switch ($params['count_expired']) {
    case 'true': $cmpr='<';
       break;
    case 'false': $cmpr='>';
       break;
  default: return 'Wrong argument in "count_expired"';
  }
   $cond='(end_time '.$cmpr.' NOW() )';
}
if (isset($params['category'])) {
  $tables.=', '.cms_db_prefix().'module_news_categories';
  if ($cond!='') $cond.=" AND ";
  $cond.="(news_category_name
   LIKE '".$params['category']."')
   AND (".cms_db_prefix()."module_news_categories.news_category_id = 
   ".cms_db_prefix()."module_news.news_category_id)";
}
if($cond!='') $cond='WHERE ('.$cond.')';
$query = 'SELECT COUNT(news_id) FROM '.$tables.' '.$cond;
$newscount = &$db->GetOne($query);
$smarty->assign('newscount',$newscount);

$crumbcount=Floor($newscount/$number);
unset($newscrumbs);
for ($i=0;$i<=$crumbcount;$i++ ) {
    $newscrumbs.="<a href=\"".join_uri($i*$number)."\">".($i+1)."</a>";
    if ($i<$crumbcount){
      if (isset($params['delimiter'])) {
         $newscrumbs.=$params['delimiter'];
      }
    }
  }
$smarty->assign('newscrumbs',$newscrumbs);

Call the UDT {newsindex} with these parametres:
(needed)start(the starting number of the first news; (first is 0))
(needed)number(the maximum of the news showed per page)
(optional)category
(optional)count_expired='true/false' (if not specified, it will count all the news in the scope)
(optional)delimiter (for instance '|')

Then, further in the page:
{if $news_start > '0'}Previous {/if}
shows the link to the previous news (if any);
{if $news_start + $news_number< $newscount}Next {/if}
the same for the next ones;
{$newscrumbs}
for the news pagination.

Maybe I should rewrite wiki...

Vin · **Joined:** Sun Jan 07, 2007 8:54 pm **Posts:** 267

See updated documenation: http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php ... fined_Tags

taufikp · **Joined:** Tue May 01, 2007 2:52 am **Posts:** 27

Thanks Daniel15 and Vin! Very useful code!

M@rijn · **Posted:** Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:24 am

Is it possible that this option becomes available in the next News module release?

cyberman · **Posted:** Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:39 am

From Blog

Quote:

- News enhancements
- Frontend Pagination for summary articles

harleyquinn · **Posted:** Thu Jul 05, 2007 3:51 pm

Unfortunately, this method doesn't work with News 2.3, and I prefer this version to the pagination built into the current news module.

Did anyone out there get this working with News 2.3? I've been trying to figure this out for the past two days with no luck.

Peciura · **Posted:** Thu Aug 26, 2010 7:11 pm

Yet another solution to have lots of numbers on page

.

This solution should work with ugly url only.
This method does not depend on any module, but you need to know :
a. current page number
b. page count
c. pagination url parameter (e.g. 'pagenum')

Originally pagination on Products module looks like

Quote:

<< < Page 444 of 1000 > >>

Pagination on template looks like

Code:

{if isset($pagecount) && $pagecount gt 1}

{$firstlink} {$prevlink}  {$pagetext} {$curpage} {$oftext} {$pagecount}  {$nextlink} {$lastlink}

{/if}

We can make it look like this (444 is a current page)

Quote:

1 90 190 290 390 400 410 420 430 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 458 468 478 488 498 598 698 798 1000

Colors just explains pagination pattern. And here is pagination template

Code:

{if isset($pagecount) && $pagecount gt 1}
   {if $curpage>1}
      {assign var='tmp_link' value=$prevlink}
   {else}
      {assign var='tmp_link' value=$nextlink}
   {/if}

   {pagination link=$tmp_link param='page' max=$pagecount  current=$curpage assign='temp' pattern='4,5,3' extreme='true'}

   
      {foreach from=$temp key='page_nb' item='tmp'}
         {if !empty($tmp)}
            {$page_nb}
         {else}
            {$curpage}
         {/if}
         {' '};
      {/foreach}
   
{/if}

You can see 3 comma separated numbers in pattern. First one corresponds to 4 pages that are next to each other, second - 5 pages that differ by 10 from each other, third - 3 pages that differ by 100 and so on. If parameter extreme is not empty links to the first and the last page will be included if not present.

This is an UDT {pagination} that assigns array of pagination links

Code:

array($page_number => 'http://www ...', ... )

Current page has empty value. Most parameters are from standard pagination.

Code:

/**
* Create array of pagination links
*
* @params   string   $params['link']      Mandatory. Href or complete link (href will be extracted).
* @params   string   $params['current']   Mandatory. Current page number
* @params   string   $params['max']      Mandatory. Max page number
* @params   string   $params['param']   Mandatory. Unique part of url param. e.g. 'pagenumber'
* @params   string   $params['assign']   Mandatory. Name of variable to assign result array($page_number=>'http://www... ', ...)
* @params   string   $params['pattern']   Pagination pattern default '10,10'.
* @params   string   $params['extreme']   Include first and last links
*
*/
$default_pattern = '10,10';

if (!empty($params['link'])      &&
   !empty($params['current'])   &&
   !empty($params['max'])      &&
   !empty($params['param'])   &&
   !empty($params['assign'])){

   $link = preg_replace("/.*href=[\"\' ]*([^\"\']*).*/", '$1', $params['link']);
   $link = html_entity_decode(trim(strip_tags($link)));   //extract href
   $param = trim($params['param']);
   $assign = trim($params['assign']);
   $max = intval($params['max']);
   $current = intval($params['current']);
   $params['pattern'] = (empty($params['pattern']))? $default_pattern : $params['pattern'];
   $pattern = explode(',', trim($params['pattern']));
   $extreme = (empty($params['extreme']))? FALSE : TRUE;

//debug_display($param);
   if(strpos($link, $param.'=')){
      $smarty = cms_utils::get_smarty();
      $links = array();

      $i_min = $i_max = $current;
      foreach($pattern as $exp=>$count){
         for($i = 1; $i <= $count; $i++){
            $delta = pow(10, $exp);
            if($i_min > ($delta + 1)){
               $i_min -= $delta;
               $links[$i_min] = htmlentities(preg_replace( "/$param=\d+/", $param.'='.$i_min, $link));
            }
            if($i_max < ($max - $delta)){
               $i_max += $delta;
               $links[$i_max] = htmlentities(preg_replace(  "/$param=\d+/", $param.'='.$i_max, $link));
            }
         }
         if ($extreme){
            if($current != 1 && !isset($links[1])){
               $links[1] = htmlentities(preg_replace( "/$param=\d+/", $param.'=1', $link));
            }
            if($current != $max && !isset($links[$max])){
               $links[$max] = htmlentities(preg_replace( "/$param=\d+/", $param.'='.$max, $link));
            }
         }
         $links[$current] = '';
      }
      ksort($links);
      $smarty->assign($assign, $links);
   }
}

EDIT: fixed broken UDT. Removed colors from code and template.

HOWTO: Proper news pagination (with page numbers!)

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