Offsetting categories | ExpressionEngine Community Forums

Posted: 15 August 2007 08:53 AM

[ Ignore ]

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Is it possible to offset a list of categories using the categories tag? I notice that its not on the docs.

This is what I have

{exp:weblog:categories weblog="weblogname" show_empty="no" style="linear"}

<li><a href="{path="stockists/listing/{segment_3}/C{category_id}}">{category_name}</a></li>

{/exp:weblog:categories} 

Which produces this page

But I need the list in columns (they are listed from left to right at the moment by floating then left in my CSS), the only way I can think to do it is to do 4 columns and use offset and 4 lots of categories tags.

Any suggestions will be welcomed

Thanks

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Posted: 29 August 2007 02:56 PM

[ Ignore ] [ # 1 ]

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Any ideas people?? Could this be achieved with the query module? I’ve seen similar things with the query module but I’m unsure of how to use it!

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Posted: 06 September 2007 02:16 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 2 ]

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Can anyone pleeeease answer yes or no to this please?! I need to find a way to make this work

Many thanks

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Posted: 14 September 2007 05:54 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 3 ]

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Mikee Bee - 15 August 2007 08:53 AM
the only way I can think to do it is to do 4 columns and use offset and 4 lots of categories tags.

If you were willing to do it like this (manually using as many category tags as needed and adjust the offsets), writing a plugin for it would take only a few minutes.

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Posted: 14 September 2007 06:40 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 4 ]

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Hiya,

Sorry only just noticed this post so that’s why I haven’t replied yet

I think (could be wrong though) that you could maybe get this to work by using PHP in conjunction with the categories tag.
What you would do is set a $count variable to 0 before the categories tag spits anything out. You would then spit out each category into a DIV (far left column) and let this happen for as many that you want in a column each time incrementing the PHP $count variable. Once you reach the count that you wish to start the next DIV at you would start a new DIV and carry on as before and so on and so forth.

This (with a little bit of clever PHP) could also be totally dynamic so that you could first of all find out how many towns there are altogether, divide this by three for your columns (or however many columns you would like - being dynamic this could even be changed on the fly!). You would then have a max width that the columns are allowed to take up in the design and then you could dynamically create the DIV columns to these specifications. A little bit of work but it would mean that any time you add new towns to the list then the page would automatically re-design itself as it were to the correct format every time!!!

Now I could be completely wrong on all of this and I gladly welcome people to tell me that I am as I have been in the past… aren’t we all at some time!! :-D but I am almost 99% sure it should be able to be done like this.

Also as silenz has said a plugin could probably be created to handle this for you also but I personally wouldn’t know where to start on that myself.

Hope this helps a bit?

Best wishes,

Mark

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Posted: 14 September 2007 09:10 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 5 ]

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Well, I could use this for another project so I did a quick shot.

The plugin can be used in the way Mikee described in the first post.

Alternatively it can also automatically create a specified number of <DIV>-blocks.

Instructions are included on the plugins-page in ControlPanel.

I’m a bit in a hurry right now and quite busy on the weekend so I cannot guarantee to answer any questions or iron out any bugs before next week.

pi.cat_offset.php

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Posted: 14 September 2007 11:03 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 6 ]

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Good god silenz (and Mark)! Thankyou so much, I’ll give this little betty a whirl and report back!!

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Posted: 18 September 2007 03:45 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 7 ]

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Hi Silenz, using the plugin and its working sweet. Only problem I’ve found so far is that its outputting an extra column than specified but only on one of the pages I use it on!!?

<ul id="regionlist">

{exp:cat_offset:auto delimiter="</li>" columns="5" class="catcol"}
{exp:weblog:categories weblog="stockists_{segment_3}" show_empty="no" style="linear"}

<li><a href="{path="stockists/listing/{segment_3}/C{category_id}}">{category_name}</a></li>

{/exp:weblog:categories}
{/exp:cat_offset:auto}

</ul> 

All the pages run through one template it just switches the categories based on the url segment

This page and this page are fine but this page is getting an extra column to accommodate the last category ‘Turkey’ as you can see from the source.

Any ideas?

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Posted: 18 September 2007 04:00 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 8 ]

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Mikee Bee - 18 September 2007 03:45 AM
Any ideas?

Yes. I made a rounding mistake
But that is what beta-testers are for, aren’t they?

If you re-download the plugin it ought to be fixed.

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Posted: 18 September 2007 04:03 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 9 ]

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Hi there,

Just saw this post had been updated and was wondering if I could download the plug-in also? I noticed that a second ago it was on the forum but when I clicked on it all I got was a blank page come up and now after refreshing the page the download link is no longer there?

Just wondering if I could get a look though?

Best wishes,

Mark

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Posted: 18 September 2007 04:57 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 10 ]

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Seems something went wrong with re-attaching the file.
It’s back now.

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Posted: 18 September 2007 04:58 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 11 ]

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Aha,

It’s back again now. Don’t know what was going on there though!

Thanks.

Mark

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Posted: 18 September 2007 04:58 AM

[ Ignore ] [ # 12 ]

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We wrote at the same time!!

Thanks though. Will take a look at this as it could come in handy for a site that I maintain.

Best wishes,

Mark

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