Thread

Ok, this has always bugged me and hopefully someone can chime in on this.

What is the purpose of the {total_results} variable when it loops the total results (or total count) for each result?

For example, if I do something like:

{exp:channel:entries channel="something" author_id="CURRENT_USER"}
{total_results}
{/exp:channel:entries}

and If I have lets say 8 posts in channel ‘something’, It will output something like:

8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8

But If I limit the result to 1:

{exp:channel:entries channel="something" author_id="CURRENT_USER" limit="1"} 
{total_results}
{/exp:channel:entries}

It outputs:

1

Am I missing something here? :/  Why does it loop the total number of entries I have with the total number of entries I have, yet when I limit to 1 it totals it as 1?

So, the question then is, why does this even exist since it never does what we intrinsically want it to do? Why does it not just give me a single number with the total number of results for ‘something’ channel?

It’s useful when you want to see if you’re on the last entry of the loop:

{exp:channel:entries channel="products"}
{if count == 1}
<ul>
{/if}
<li>{title}</li>
{if count == total_results}
</ul>
{/if}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Also, I’ve made an extension which adds an {absolute_total_results} tag to the entries: https://github.com/rsanchez/absolute_total_results

Hey Rob - I saw your extension, but even with the above scenario I mentioned I got no results.  Just want a simple single output of the total results.

I see what you’re saying, all you wanna do is output the total results once. Forget about my extension, then, I misunderstood you the first time.

You could just do this:

{exp:channel:entries channel="products"}
{if count == 1}{total_results}{/if}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Word?  Interesting.  Now why does that work?  Is it because the conditional stops the loop and evaluates just one result?

It doesn’t technically stop the loop, but rather, only prints text during the first run of the loop.

Gotcha.  Thanks Rob.

Hi Marshall,

I’m not entirely certain what you’re doing here so this may or may not be of relevance but if you say had more than 100 entries in your Channel and used the above code then you might see a performance hit although not too noticeable with just one tag due to the fact that ExpressionEngine would bring back internally all 101 (for example) entries just to give you what you need here.

If you used these types of conditionals a lot in your templates then those slight hits could possibly add up to a larger impact. I’m not saying that you will have problems here but definitely just something to be made aware of.

If that did start to happen then you might be better off using the Query Module tag and getting what you need in that way instead :

Pseudo code

{exp:query sql="

SELECT COUNT(*) AS channel_total_results
FROM
        exp_channel_titles
WHERE
        channel_id = '1'
AND
        status = 'open'
"}

{channel_total_results}

{/exp:query}

Mark

P.S. Thanks for the help there Rob.

Thanks Mark - I had tried to use a query and had even got results, but I couldn’t figure out how to limit the query to just the CURRENT_USER of the entry since that isn’t an column in exp_channel_titles .  My SQL skills aren’t up to par yet, so I ditched the idea.

But it stands to reason that intrinsically a tag like that should just give me the total results and nothing else, no?

A quick addition while it’s on my mind - I used Rob’s extension but also needed to show the {absolute_total_results} within the {paginate}{/paginate} tagpair. You can do this by modifying his extension by adding an extra hook:

$hooks[] = array(
   'method' => 'channel_entries_query_result',
   'hook' => 'channel_entries_query_result'
  );

And corresponding extra method:

public function channel_entries_query_result($channel, $query_result) {
         $channel->paginate_data = $this->EE->TMPL->swap_var_single('absolute_total_results', $channel->total_rows, $channel->paginate_data);
         return $query_result;
        }

It doesn’t actually modify the query result - the only reason I used this hook was because it appeared to come at the right place in the code for us to be able to access the total_results and paginate_data variables.

Hope this proves useful for someone. Rob - feel free to include in the extension if you think it would be worthwhile and isn’t too hack-y….

Rob’s extension now includes the above modification.

https://github.com/rsanchez/absolute_total_results