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Sort Entries Alphabetically, Group By Letter

Posted: 03 June 2008 03:49 PM

[ Ignore ]

Joined: 2007-05-16
27 posts

I’d like to return a list of entries grouped by letter, with the ability to wrap the letter header (e.g. “A”) in a different tag than the entries. Example:

A
Apple
Artichoke

B
Ball
Bible
Brian

And so on…

I found a plugin that can do this, but it is not well documented and some of the parameters have to be hard coded into the plugin. Is it possible to do this without a plugin?

—
Brian Morykon

Ingmar Greil

Posted: 03 June 2008 04:49 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 1 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2004-05-15
29075 posts

There is no native solution that I am aware of, so the atozee plugin is probably your best choice. There is some more info in the wiki.

Moving to Howto.

grantmx

Posted: 03 June 2008 05:01 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 2 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2007-06-05
1431 posts

I want something similar, but I all I need to do is sort the entry title by alphabetically. I’ll just make exp:weblog:entries for each letter.

I dont see the atozee plug-in on the addon-page. Can you direct us?

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Ingmar Greil

Posted: 03 June 2008 05:11 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 3 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2004-05-15
29075 posts

grantmx, keystone linked to the relevant forum thread in his post.

grantmx

Posted: 03 June 2008 05:15 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 4 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2007-06-05
1431 posts

Thanks Ingmar

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Ingmar Greil

Posted: 03 June 2008 05:18 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 5 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2004-05-15
29075 posts

No worries, and good luck

rokker

Posted: 03 June 2008 05:37 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 6 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2008-01-27
140 posts

i sort live music venues and bands by alphetical letter (like if you want to see all bands with names starting with the letter B) using a template that sorts alphabetically. then, i made a category group to share amongst all of my weblogs called “alphabetical” where a category is held for each letter in the alphabet (each letter has a category_id). it’s handy and can be used across multiple weblogs to sort in just about any template if the subject matter can be alphabetized meaningfully.

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Rökker
Vodkatuer
http://www.rokkervodka.com

grantmx

Posted: 03 June 2008 05:43 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 7 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2007-06-05
1431 posts

I don’t remember, but is it possible to use exp:query in conjunction with exp:weblog:entires to pull custom field data from each entry?

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grantmx

Posted: 03 June 2008 05:51 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 8 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2007-06-05
1431 posts

Never mind. Yes.

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stinhambo

Posted: 10 July 2008 04:19 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 9 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2007-01-05
1427 posts

I am trying to create groups of links broken down by the first letter.

So -

A
Apple
Amsterdam
Aluminium
Abracadabra

B
Burger
Black
Banter

Etc.

The second thing is not to show anything if there are no entries beginning with that letter.

I tried to adapt Ray’s SQL but I am a bit lost -

<?php
global $DB;
$gletter='_';
$x = '';
    for ($i=65; $i<=90; $i++) { // For lowercase letters, use the numbers 97-122 instead
        $x = chr($i);
      if ($gletter<>substr($x,0,1)) {
              $gletter=substr($x,0,1);
                    $results = $DB->query("SELECT COUNT(*) as number FROM exp_weblog_titles WHERE weblog_id = 2 AND title LIKE '$gletter%' LIMIT 1;");
                    $count = $results->row['number'];
                         if ($count > 0) {
                                echo '{exp:weblog:entries weblog="artists" orderby="title|artists_first_names" sort="asc"}
                <div class="ddmcc">
                    <ul>
                        <p class="sep">'.$gletter.'</p>
                        <ul>
                            <li><a href="{url_title_path=">{title}, {artists_first_names}</a></li>
                        </ul>
                    </ul>
                </div> <!-- ddmcc -->
                {/exp:weblog:entries}';
                        } else {
                                echo '<li>'.$gletter.'</li>';
                        }
                                    
            }
                    
    }
?> 

But this just spits out all the entries each time a first letter is matched with any of the entries.

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Cocoaholic

Posted: 10 July 2008 08:29 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 10 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2002-02-05
462 posts

Hi Steve,

The simplest solution I came up with is this one:

<?php $temp = ''; ?>

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="your_weblog" orderby="title" sort="asc"}

<?php
$letter = strtoupper(substr('{title}', 0, 1));
if ($temp != $letter) {
    echo "<h3>" . $letter . "</h3>";
    $temp = $letter;
}
?>

<p>{title}</p>

{/exp:weblog:entries} 

PHP on output.

salandra

Posted: 19 December 2008 02:41 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 11 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2006-07-31
65 posts

How can this still script be adapted to select a particular letter of alphabet or character?

wrightmight

Posted: 27 March 2009 05:04 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 12 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2009-02-09
20 posts

Thanks, Cocoaholic, your code works like a charm.

sm9

Posted: 26 April 2010 01:40 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 13 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2007-05-15
433 posts

Another thanks to Cocoaholic, that code just worked great for me too!

I was even able to adapt it slightly to output a list of anchors too:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="my_weblog" orderby="title" sort="asc" dynamic="off"}
<?php
$letter = strtoupper(substr('{title}', 0, 1));
if ($temp != $letter) {
    echo "<a >".$letter."</a>";
    $temp = $letter;
}
?>
{/exp:weblog:entries} 

To perfect it, I might try and adapt this further so that letters of the alphabet with no entries on the page still appear, but without the anchor links, but I’ll see if my client is happy without this first.

Thanks.

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Jonathan Schofield

Posted: 29 June 2010 07:34 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 14 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2006-11-02
228 posts

This works a treat. Thanks to Cocoaholic and sm9. And since I am building a glossary, my tweaked code incorporates definition lists…

<?php $temp = ''; ?>

{!-- output a linked list of the letters represented with each letter as an href --}
<p id="a-z">
Skip to terms beginning with: 
{exp:weblog:entries weblog="glossary" orderby="title" sort="asc"}
<?php
$letter = strtoupper(substr('{title}', 0, 1));
if ($temp != $letter) {
    echo '<a href="#'.$letter.'" rel="self">'.$letter.'</a></li>';
    $temp = $letter;
}
?>
{/exp:weblog:entries}
</p>

{!-- output a linked list of the terms covered to show/hide with jQuery --}
<div id="terms">
<p class="preamble">We have definitions for: </p>
<ol>
{exp:weblog:entries weblog="glossary" orderby="title" sort="asc"}
<li><a href="#{url_title}" rel="self">{title}</a></li>
{/exp:weblog:entries}
</ol>
</div>

{!-- output the definitions --}
{exp:weblog:entries weblog="glossary" orderby="title" sort="asc"}
<?php
$letter = strtoupper(substr('{title}', 0, 1));
if ($temp != $letter) {
    // set id to the current letter as destination for the a-z list links
    echo '<h2 id="'.$letter.'">'.$letter.'</h2>';
    $temp = $letter;
}
?>
{!-- set id to the url title as destination for the list of terms links --}
<dl><dt id="{url_title}">{title}</dt>
<dd>{body}</dd></dl>

{/exp:weblog:entries} 

Dave @ Exp:resso

Posted: 06 July 2010 01:41 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 15 ] [ Rating: 0 ]

Joined: 2009-09-20
526 posts

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this code pull every single entry, and then just display the relevant ones? WOuldn’t add a lot of overhead with thousands of records? Surely a query that only pulls the required entries each time would be a lot more efficient?

Really wish you could just do something like search:title=“A*” in the channel entries tag!

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