Using a checkbox to control display of an article

[MarcC]

I have a checkbox I'm using to control whether an article is shown on the front page. The field name is display_options, a page array set to multiple pages API ref, displayed as checkboxes. Its page array parent is /tools/display-options, and there are two children, not-shown-on-front-page and not-shown-in-archive.

Right now I just want to make sure that the first one works: Not Shown on Front Page.

Here's the working "before" code with no test for the checkbox:

$stories = $pages->get('/news/co-op-news')->children("limit=4");

Here's the code with a selector added for the front page display test:

$stories = $pages->get('/news/co-op-news')->children("limit=4, display_options!=not-shown-on-front-page");

...but that shows only the article where I have checked "Not Shown on Front Page" (the opposite of what I want to see). :-/

I also tried this:

$stories = $pages->get('/news/co-op-news')->children("limit=4, display_options=not-shown-on-front-page");

...and no articles show up at all, checked or unchecked. Any ideas? Thanks. Haven't used checkboxes before.

[ryan]

Your display_options in the selector needs one of the following:

• The literal $page object for page 'not-shown-on-front-page'
  
• The full path to the page you are trying to match
  
• The ID of the page you are trying to match
  

As a result, I'm thinking you'd want to do this (use the path rather than the name):

$stores = $pages->get('/news/co-op-news')->children('limit=4, display_options!=/tools/display-options/not-shown-on-front-page');

If you aren't going to have a ton of display_options, you might also want to consider just using single checkbox fields for these, in which case you could just do this:

not_shown_on_front_page=0

[MarcC]

Thanks, Ryan. I switched display_options to a single checkbox (bool). However, both checked and unchecked items are hidden now. See anything wrong with this?

$stories = $pages->get('/news/co-op-news')->children("limit=4, display_options=0");

(Will probably change the field name later so it's more specific)

[apeisa]

Hidden pages don't come up in selectors, which return multiple pages PageArray (=find, children, etc). You can include those by adding "include=hidden" to your selector.

EDIT: Not sure if I am on the same map at all . Your selector looks fine to me, should include only pages with display_options unchecked. Sometimes when you develop (edit and rename tempaltes, fields etc) pw can go dizzy on selectors (caches results I assume?). Try saving the parent page. That is very rare (happened me maybe once or twice) and not sure if that is the case here.

Edited January 16, 2012 by apeisa
I was talking about totally different thing earlier.

[MarcC]

Oh, looks like it's working now. Sorry! Thanks for the responses.