Help with preselecting item from category dropdown menu based on URL visitor is on

#1 / Jan 20, 2011 3:49pm

porpoise

30 posts

I am using the Channel Categories Tag Category Dropdown code:

http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/modules/channel/categories.html#dropdown

Once a user selects a category from the dropdown and is taken to that category page, the dropdown resets. I would like the dropdown to preselect the category the user is on.

This is my code:

<form name="catmenu" action="">
                      <select name="selcat"
                   >
                        <option value="">Location</option>
                        {exp:channel:categories channel="event" style="linear" category_group="1"}
                        <option value="{path='events'}">{category_name}</option>
                        {/exp:channel:categories}
                      </select>
                    </form>

#2 / Jan 21, 2011 3:06am
John Henry Donovan
12339 posts
porpoise,

you could probably do something like this
```
<option value="{path='events'}" {if segment_3 == {category_url_title}}selected{/if}>{category_name}</option>
```
Does that help?

#3 / Jan 21, 2011 3:43pm

No, that’s not working. When I go to my base events page - index.php/events - and use that code it applies “selected” to every option even before I select anything from the dropdown. Then when I select Chicago from the dropdown and go to /index.php/events/category/chicago, none of the dropdown options are selected!

Do you think the Javascript in the form is screwing it up?

(note I’ve put a space between “on” and “change” to prevent the forum from stripping out this code.

<form name="catmenu" action="">

                      <select name="selcat"
                    on change ="location=document.catmenu.selcat.options[document.catmenu.selcat.selectedIndex].value;">
                        <option value="">Location</option>
                        
                        <option value="http://ice:8888/index.php/events/category/chicago" >Chicago</option>
                        
                        <option value="http://ice:8888/index.php/events/category/new-york" >New York</option>
                        
                      </select>
                    </form>

#4 / Jan 22, 2011 4:34pm

Greg Salt

3988 posts

Hi porpoise,

That’s because on your base events page there is no segment_3. You would need to use the code John Henry suggested and then extend it to account for that. Maybe wrapping that in a primary conditional to check for the existence of segment_3 would work for you:

<form name="catmenu" action="">
<select name="selcat">
<option value="">Location</option>
{exp:channel:categories channel="event" style="linear" category_group="1"}
{if segment_3 != ''}
<option value="{path='events'}" {if segment_3 == category_url_title}selected="selected"{/if}>{category_name}</option> 
{if:else}
<option value="{path='events'}">{category_name}</option>
{/if}
{/exp:channel:categories}
</select>
</form>

Cheers

Greg

#5 / Jan 24, 2011 3:48pm

porpoise
30 posts

Ok I will try this
#6 / Jan 24, 2011 4:06pm

Ingmar
29245 posts

Very good, let us know how it goes, please, we’ll be here.

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