How would I go to implement custom permalinks?

Martijn · 2010-12-29 13:59:20

Just recently I pulled Textpattern out of the closet to give it a try. Currently I’m undecided on whether I should use it for my websites or not. One of the main issues I have with it are how “static” the different permalink settings are.

So I was wondering if there is any way to go to add my own permalink options to Textpattern, preferably without having to change the core?

I tried out graeme’s gbp_permanent_links but found it to be very limiting. While it offers a way to reassign all links and reorder the different link segments it doesn’t allow for any custom coding or database querying, which I need.

An example of how I have been linking to articles, and how I want to go on linking to my articles is by the ISO 8601 Ordinal dates timestamp. Much how Tantek is doing his permalinks.

A regular expression to check for these and capture them is no problem:

([0-9]{5,})/?([0-3]([0-5]\d|6[0-6]))/?(\d+)?

But how do I get Textpattern to display the correct article(s) when the above regular expression matches the request URL? Any pointers are appreciated.

Posted this here and not in either plugin requests or development because I’m in the first place looking for pointers to existing plugins or articles talking about this. Might have to move this to either of those boards later if nothing turns up here.

Thanks for your time —

maniqui · 2010-12-29 15:17:41

Hi Martij,

as you may have already noticed (and tried?), gbp_permanent_links have the ability to match URLs by running regular expressions on them.
For matched URLs, you could also tell gbp_permanent_links to use a particular page template.
So, you could create an “archive_by_date” (or any other name you like) page template, and then tell gbp_permanent_link to use that page template for matched URLs.
Look under the “Destination” panel on gbp_permanent_links “Build” tab.

Then, in that page template, you can do your custom coding and database querying (if it’s something really advanced, I suggest you to check the smd_query plugin).

Hope that helps to begin with.

Martijn · 2010-12-29 15:47:45

Thanks maniqui!

I truthfully didn’t think of pointing those to my own type of page. I’m going to give it a try. But wouldn’t that make me lose the ability to use a lot of tags? Will Textpattern still know the thing that is being displayed is an article page and accept my usage of article-only tags?

maniqui · 2010-12-29 16:27:41

Mmmm…
Good question.

I may have missed something: your URLs will look just like this: example.com/YYYYDDD?
And if so, is this going to be an URL for displaying a list of articles (published on YYYYDDD) or is it going to be a specific permalink for a particular article?

If so, you are right about Textpattern not know exactly what to display, as the URL doesn’t indicate any particular section, and it may be ambiguous (what if two articles are published on the same date? which one to show? or, again, that kind of URLs will be for listing all articles on that day?), and as you may know, <txp:article /> is section sensitive.

Martij, I could go on with some other TXP concepts & ideas, but first I would prefer that you share more info about what are you trying to achieve, as I’m a bit lost.

Martijn · 2010-12-29 16:59:02

Aah, yes, I guess just a regular expression for fetching the data doesn’t really explain what I want now does it. Sorry about that.

The optimal result would be something like this:

example.com/02010 = 301 redirect to example.com/02010/
example.com/02010/ = Return all posts made in 2010
example.com/02010/363 = 301 redirect to example.com/02010/363/
example.com/02010/363/ = If there are multiple posts made on this day return them all. If there is only 1 post return it.
example.com/02010/363/7 = If there are multiple posts made on this day return the seventh one. If there is no seventh post on this day do a 301 or 302 (I’m not decided on this) to example.com/02010/363/

That seems to cover all bases in my mind? The question is how to teach Textpattern about this.

I’m currently trying some things on the pretext-callback, having a try at parsing the link before preText() does and that way enabling Textpattern of accepting any link I want.

+++ Edit:

function zegnat_rewrite() {
   if (strlen(gps('id'))<1) {
      $url = zegnat_get_req();
      if (preg_match('#^/(\d{5,})/([0-3]([0-5]\d|6[0-6]))/?[^/]*$#',$url['req'],$matches)) {
         $date = new DateTime(ltrim($matches[1],'0').$matches[2]);
         if (count($hits=safe_rows('*','textpattern','posted LIKE \''.$date->format('Y-m-d').'%\''))==1) {
            $_GET['id'] = $hits[0]['ID'];
         }
      }
   }
}

if (defined('txpinterface') && txpinterface == 'public') {
   register_callback('zegnat_rewrite','pretext');
}

zegnat_get_req() is a copy of publish.php lines 234–249 to give me a cleaned up version of the requested URL. This only interprets a fully correct datestamp and it only works for 1 post per day but should give an idea of what I’m trying to do.

What it doesn’t do is allow for per-date archives and it doesn’t rewrite <txp:permlink> the way gbp_permanent_links does.

+++ Second edit:

I found out about $prefs['custom_url_func'] and I think I’ve got everything working completely now. Thanks for your time.

Last edited by Martijn (2010-12-30 16:47:52)

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2010-12-29 13:59:20

How would I go to implement custom permalinks?

#2 2010-12-29 15:17:41

Re: How would I go to implement custom permalinks?

#3 2010-12-29 15:47:45

Re: How would I go to implement custom permalinks?

#4 2010-12-29 16:27:41

Re: How would I go to implement custom permalinks?

#5 2010-12-29 16:59:02

Re: How would I go to implement custom permalinks?

Board footer