Authors listings only if more than 1 author exists

philwareham · 2020-09-30 14:50:49

Good afternoon,

I’m currently, in spare moments, building a theme for Textpattern – which I’ll share more details on soon.

However, in the theme I only want to expose author listings if there is actually more than 1 author that has written articles in the CMS. i.e. only hyperlink the <txp:author /> tag and have author listing pages if articles by multiple authors exist (otherwise it doesn’t make sense to have article listings by author if the site only has 1 author).

Is this doable? Can you share some code that detects this?

Cheers!

Pat64 · 2020-09-30 15:27:25

Tested with only one author and multiples ones:

<txp:evaluate query='<txp:authors /> > 1'>Multiple authors<txp:else />1 author</txp:evaluate>

So you may use a <txp:variable /> into this line for more flexibility.

Last edited by Pat64 (2020-09-30 15:27:48)

philwareham · 2020-09-30 15:41:33

Thanks Patrick – but doesn’t that just check how many authors are registered in the CMS, not if articles have actually been written by them.

I’m guessing that’ll be an article_custom tag query, somehow?

colak · 2020-09-30 16:17:47

It may work with a variable containing the if_different tag the result of which can then be evaluated.

uli · 2020-09-30 16:37:08

Ah, thanks, Yiannis, your if_different made me aware: We’ve had a very similar request not long ago.

philwareham · 2020-09-30 16:44:20

Ah, OK, thanks all. So the way Oleg demonstrated is not very performant, it seems?

I could probably go with Patrick’s suggestion – it’s better than not having anything at all. Shame there is no tag that covers the situation properly though.

etc · 2020-09-30 18:57:38

You can

<txp:php>
    echo getThing('SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT AuthorID) FROM textpattern WHERE Status > 3');
</txp:php>

Or register getThing for use in <txp:evaluate /> and

<txp:evaluate query="getThing('SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT AuthorID) FROM textpattern WHERE Status > 3')" />

But yes, a tag or attribute would be handy.

michaelkpate · 2020-09-30 19:14:28

<txp:variable name="multipleauthors" value="0" />

<txp:article limit="9999">
    <txp:if_different>
        <txp:variable name="meaninglessvalue" value='<txp:author />' />
        <txp:variable name="multipleauthors" add="1" />
    </txp:if_different>
</txp:article>

<txp:if_variable name="multipleauthors" value="1" >
    There is only one author.
<txp:else />
    There are multiple authors.
</txp:if_variable>

philwareham · 2020-10-01 08:16:50

etc wrote #326178:

Or register getThing for use in <txp:evaluate /> and

<txp:evaluate query="getThing('SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT AuthorID) FROM textpattern WHERE Status > 3')" />...

I have tried to use this code but I get a tag error (the PHP example works though) – do I need any other code to make this version work? I’m concious that if I use the PHP version then users with ‘Use PHP in pages’ pref turned off will get errors.

etc · 2020-10-01 08:24:44

philwareham wrote #326180:

I have tried to use this code but I get a tag error (the PHP example works though) – do I need any other code to make this version work?

Works for me. Have you added getThing to Advanced options > PHP functions enabled in txp:evaluate?

Anyway, it’s easy to add this functionality to <txp:article_custom />, we just have to choose an attribute. Would this do

<txp:article_custom pgonly pageby="AuthorID" />

or we need a new attribute?

Edit registering getThing is risky, since you users will be able to run db queries.

Bloke · 2020-10-01 08:57:20

etc wrote #326181:

<txp:article_custom pgonly pageby="AuthorID" />...

Fine by me if it’s not too confusing. Anything else makes sense here in pageby while we’re at it? Our current definition is:

pageby=“integer” The number of articles to output per page.

So we’d need to figure out how to reword that accordingly.

Also, what would the result be without pgonly?

etc · 2020-10-01 09:07:29

Bloke wrote #326182:

Also, what would the result be without pgonly?

Non-numeric pageby and pgonly are not used atm, suggestions welcome. That could be as well

<txp:article_custom pgonly="AuthorID" />

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#1 2020-09-30 14:50:49