Thread

I have a pair of channels, Blog_posts and Profiles. Blog_posts.profiles is a multi-relationship field to Profiles, thus making a many:many relationship between the tables. In other words, a blog post might reference multiple profiles, and a profile will be included in many blog posts.

I need to query “all blog posts from all referenced profiles” from a blog post. i.e. if a Post links to the Andy and Bill profiles, I need a list of all posts that link to the Andy and Bill profiles.

I thought I could do…

{exp:channel:entries channel="blog_posts" limit="16" dynamic="no" search:profiles="{profiles}"}

…but it’s not working. I only noticed the fine print in the documentation — ‘Only fields of the type “Text Input”, “Textarea”, and “Drop-down Lists” are searched with this parameter’ — a moment ago.

Any thoughts? I thought I could bust out a MySQL query, but the profiles column in the database doesn’t even appear to reference exp_channel_data rows.

*bump* for the noon crowd

How are you relating Profiles to Posts? Are you using the generic related entries field type or Playa?

Generic.

(to clarify, the Posts channel has a Multi-Relationship channel field called “Profiles”, which relates to the Profiles channel)

Hi Eric,

Generic.

(to clarify, the Posts channel has a Multi-Relationship channel field called “Profiles”, which relates to the Profiles channel)

Those are contradictory statements. ExpressionEngine generic, native relationship field type is a one-to-one. Any field that allows for many-to-may is 3rd party.

Are you using this field type? Any full template code you can share?

Thanks!

My apologies, you are correct, I’m using that add-on.

Hey Eric,

I really do want to help:

Any full template code you can share?

If you can show me how you are piecing this all together, I can hopefully give you the answers you need. Without some code though, it’s like flying blind.

Cheers,

Sorry, didn’t think non-functional code would help, and I’ve tried dozens of variants.

Regarding the data structure, there’s a Blog channel, and a Profiles Channel. One of the Blog channel fields is Profiles, a Multi-Relationships field. Under its Field Options / “Select the channel you wish to create a relationship with:”, the Profiles channel is selected.

Here’s one variant I’ve tried…

{exp:channel:entries channel="blog" }
{embed="shared/related_article" profiles="{profiles}"}
{/exp:channel:entries}

…and then in an embedded template:

{exp:channel:entries channel="blog" limit="16" dynamic="no" search:profiles="{embed:profiles}"} 
  {title} etc.
{/exp:channel:entries}

Assuming this doesn’t work because “exp:channel:entries search:” cannot access Multi-Relationships.

I’m getting the impression that Playa would handle this kind of thing better, I’m ready to make the investment if I have to.

Hey Eric,

You’re working too hard man! Let the add-on do its thang!

Ok, looking at the add-on page, it can either work with native {related_entries} tags or return a delimited list of entry IDs.

Uses native tags {related_entries} and {reverse_related_entries}.
{mrelshp:ids field=“my_field”} returns pipe list of related entries IDs.

Method one: - {related_entries}

{exp:channel:entries channel="blog" }
 {related_entries id="profiles"}
  {title}

 {/related_entries}
{/exp:channel:entries}

That should pull all titles from the profiles channel that have been related to the blog channel’s entry

Method 2 - {mrelshp:ids field=“my_field”} tag

{exp:channel:entries channel="blog" }
 {embed='/shared/related_article' my_profiles='{mrelshp:ids field=“profiles”}'
{/exp:channel:entries}

then…
{exp:channel:entries channel="profiles" limit="16" dynamic="no" fixed_order="{embed:my_profiles}""} 
  {title} etc.
{/exp:channel:entries}

I suggest method 1 for performance reasons, but either should work just fine.

Cheers,