Thread

Hi,

I am new to EE and I am trying to wrap my brain around how categories work in EE. I am chunking up a basic HTML template and trying to create a navigation bar using an unordered list and have EE display this list of the categories that I have in a particular category group.

I have created a category group called “content” which has the categories “tech”, “cars”, “sports”, etc. I have channels such as “articles”, “pictures”, etc. What I’m looking for would be something like this:

<ul>
<li><a href="/tech">Tech</a>
    <ul><li>Articles</li>
        <li>pictures</li>
        <li>etc…</li>
    </ul></li>
<li><a href="/cars">Cars</a>
    <ul><li>Guides</li>
        <li>Pictures</li>
        <li>etc…</li>
    </ul></li>
</ul>

So my question is whether I am misunderstanding how categories work in EE and if not, how do I use tags to create this sort of structure and secondly. The user guide seems to suggest that displaying categories is related to a specific channel? Any help is much appreciated!

You need the Channel categories tag - http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/modules/channel/categories.html

The basic syntax for outputting a list of categories in nested UL’s is this:

{exp:channel:categories}
<a href="http://{path=template_group/index}">{category_name}</a>
{/exp:channel:categories}

You may need to add some parameters to the tag to get it working how you need it, eg adding a class name, but see the Docs for availabel options.

I have been trying to use that tag.  Correct me if I’m wrong but it needs a channel name as a parameter. This seems backwards to me as not all categories will have all channels (ie. I might have a pictures channel for the “cars” category but not for the “tech” category.).

Yes you’d most likley need a Channel parameter (but not always depending what you’re trying to do)

You can output the same category tag twice, split by Channel, eg

{exp:channel:categories channel="articles"}
<a href="http://{path=template_group/index}">{category_name}</a>
{/exp:channel:categories}  

{exp:channel:categories channel="pictures"}
<a href="http://{path=template_group/index}">{category_name}</a>
{/exp:channel:categories}

Or you could combine the categories tag to cover all Channels, eg

{exp:channel:categories channel="articles|pictures"}
<a href="http://{path=template_group/index}">{category_name}</a>
{/exp:channel:categories}

Does that help?