Most selector operators throwing errors

[dragan]

I've created a couple pages that hold nothing more than categories - referenced by portfolio pages. The multi-select page fieldtypes work just fine.

Now I'd like to find all pages that have category X. Since most items have more than one category, I need selector operators like %= or *=. But these simply don't work.

e.g.

$cat = $sanitizer->selectorValue($page->title); // works

// none of these work:
$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories*=$cat, template=portfolio, sort=-Project_Date");
$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories%=$cat, template=portfolio, sort=-Project_Date");
$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories*=$cat");

produce the error messages I've uploaded as attachment below. Do I have a buggy mySQL version installed? Other basic selector queries (foo=bar) work fine...

[teppo]

If portfolio_categories is a Page field, you can't and don't need to use '*=' or '%=', use '=' instead.

In the case of Page fields '=' checks if the value of said Page field contains specified page, not if it's equal to it, so you should use that and a page ID (or Page object) to see if one of selected categories is the one you're looking for:

// this should work:
$cat = $sanitizer->selectorValue($page->title);
$cat_page = $pages->get("template=portfolio_category, name=$cat");
$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories=$cat_page");

// .. though in this case you should do this:
$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories=$page");

// .. and you could even do this:
$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories={$page->id}";

[dragan]

Thanks!

In the end, this worked:

$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories=$page, template=portfolio, sort=-Project_Date");

foreach($p as $pp) {
	echo "<a href='{$pp->url}'>{$pp->title}</a><br>";
}

I'm still a bit puzzled why the other method didn't work. So is $page some sort of short form for $page->title? Guess it must be, because it wouldn't work otherwise. On the other hand, for these category pages I'm only using the title field, nothing else.

[Soma]

$cat = $sanitizer->selectorValue($page->title); // works
$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories*=$cat, template=portfolio, sort=-Project_Date"); 

This doesn't work because a page field doesn't work with operators and titles... as teppo explained.

So you could imageine this:

portfolio_categories*=mycategory

could be seen same as:

1003|1004|1005*="mycategory"

So you would need to give it a page id or a page array and PW will make the rest.

portfolio_categories=$somecategorypage

If you do echo $somecategorypage, the toString() method of page will output the id...

So it would be like this now:

1003|1004|1005=1004

Or if you use a page array.

echo $pageArray it will return a 1003|1004|1005 string which is usable also in a selector.

1003|1004|1005=1003|1004|1005

[dragan]

OK, thanks for the explanations. The big choice of field-types is a bit overwhelming, and as a newbie, I'm still learning...

(btw, I think it's a bit of a misnomer to call a variable pageArray, when it's not an actual array, but a string. Perhaps pageList would be more appropriate?)

[nik]

...but here it actually is an array, thus the name  .

When PHP sees we're dealing with strings the string representation of a variable is used. In this case the trigger is an unescaped dollar sign between double quotation marks, but it could be the concatenation operator '.' as well. To get such a representation, the __toString() method of the class (PageArray in this case) is automagically called. See http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.magic.php#object.tostring.

The __toString() method has been implemented to return a single page id (Page or PageArray with one item) or a list of page id's with a '|' (pipe) as a separator.

I was trying to clarify the situation but I'm not sure if that's what happened after all .

[kongondo]

// .. and you could even do this:
$p = $pages->find("portfolio_categories={$page->id}";

<diversion>

Oh my word! I didn't know you could pass variables like this "portfolio_categories={$page->id}" to selectors!! I have been defining a variable first, e.g. $category= $page->title. Then passing $title to the selector "category=$category"

</diversion>