Alphabetized listing

[nurtsio]

Hi guys,

I'm working with a page that needs a vocabulary; a list of items with only two fields (word and explanation).

I have pondered how to make this listing with alphabet titles. All words alphabetized of course. Output like this:

<h3>A</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>absolute monarchy</strong>: explanation for absolute monarchy</li>
</ul>
<h3>B</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>bakeapple</strong>: explanation for bakeapple</li>
<li><strong>bankster</strong>: explanation for bankster</li>
</ul>

I have all words below one parent page.

Thanks for help in advance!

Akseli

[Adam Kiss]

Are you having problems with the loop that splits PageArray and adds header before each starting letter group, or ordering children alphabetically?

[ryan]

Use your title field for the term, and another field for the definition. For the parent of all these terms, set the default sort to be by 'title' on it's children tab. Then you'd code it something like this (below). I'll use a <dl> rather than a <ul> since a <dl> would be more semantically correct here.

<?php

function listDefinitions(PageArray $children) {

    $out = '';
    $lastLetter = '';

    foreach($children as $p) {

        $letter = strtoupper(substr($p->title, 0, 1)); 

        if($letter != $lastLetter) {
            if($out) $out .= "</dl>";
            $out .= "<h3>$letter</h3><dl>";
            $lastLetter = $letter; 
        }

        $out .= "<dt>{$p->title}</dt><dd>{$p->definition}</dd>"; 
    }

    if($out) $out .= "</dl>";

    return $out;
}

echo listDefinitions($page->children); 

[nurtsio]

Thanks a lot Ryan! You just made my day. Again.

[asbjorn]

I tried this code, and it worked great in a template of mine. But when I tried to use it in a hanna code, I got the an error like "cannot redeclare function". This might be rudimentary php, but I am at a loss. Any ideas on this?

[LostKobrakai]

hanna code snippets are evaluated multiple times in the lifetime of a single pageview, which means the function declaration is called multiple times, which is not allowed. Try creating the function in _init.php or another file which is called only once on for each request and just execute the function in the hanna code snippet.

[teppo]

Just for the record, you could also wrap the function declaration with function_exists():

if (!function_exists("listDefinitions")) {
    function listDefinitions(PageArray $children) {
        // etc.
    }
}

echo listDefinitions($page->children);