Thread

I am having a hard time with the related_entries tag in EE.  It feels very limiting in a one-to-many relationship scenario.  Am I missing something?  Should I opt for a plugin like Playa to overcome the shortcomings of EE’s related_entries tag? http://pixelandtonic.com/playa

For instance, a town has several related partners in another channel called town_partners.  My primary channel is the towns channel, my secondary channel is the town_partners channel

I created a custom relationship field in the town_partners channel, it’s called ‘partner_with’. 

I have a partner entry with a defined relationship for the city of Portland but this code doesn’t return any related entries, am I doing it backwards?  You can see the live template here:  http://ctenergychallenge.com/portland (search for ‘local partners’)

{exp:channel:entries channel="towns" limit="1" url_title="{last_segment}"}
    {title}
        <h4>Local Partners</h4>
<p>    {related_entries id="partner_with"}<br />
        {if no_related_entries}<br />
            Coming soon.<br />
        {/if}<br />
        {title}<br />
        {description}<br />
        {website}<br />
        <hr><br />
    {/related_entries}</p>

<p>{/exp:channel:entries}

Any insight on why this code does not work would be appreciated.

Hi snugghomesoftware

If a partner needs to be related to more than one town, then consider Playa. We’ve used Playa and it does work VERY well for one-to-many relationships.

If a partner only needs to be related to a single town, then the built in EE relationships will suffice.

What you’re doing with your current code is looking for Partner entries which Towns are related TO. Instead you should be looking for what Partners are related to a Town. This is called a Reverse Related Entry.

So your code would look something like this…

{exp:channel:entries channel="towns" limit="1" url_title="{last_segment}"}
    {title}
    <h4>Local Partners</h4>
<p>    {reverse_related_entries sort="desc" orderby="title"}</p>

<p>        {if no_reverse_related_entries}<br />
            Coming soon.<br />
        {/if}</p>

<p>        {title}<br />
        {description}<br />
        {website}<br />
        <hr></p>

<p>    {/reverse_related_entries}<br />
{/exp:channel:entries}

Thanks for the assist, MattP.

snugghomesoftware, does the information from Matt make sense?

Anytime Sue. Happy to be a part of the community.

Matt

Thanks Matt. Let us know if that helps, snugghomesoftware.

Thank you Matt, that nailed it.  I really appreciate you jumping in and answering that!  Thanks to you Sue for following up.

Ben

Pleasure Ben, see you around.

Thanks all! Don’t hesitate with further questions, Ben.