Orangescale.NET

Feb 13, 2007 / 7:09 pm

Related entries in Movable Type (dynamic publishing)

in Miscellaneous, Movable Type, Webdev

When I redesigned my blog, I wanted to have a ‘related entry’ feature. Here, I want to display list of entries under one category. I want to take advantage of Movable Type Dynamic Publishing.

I remembered that Jay Allen gave a template tag few months ago. After searching in Pastie (pastie: hi)!, I found the code.

Okey, here is the code (I cleaned it up a little bit):

<ul>
<MTEntryCategories>
<MTEntries lastn="3">
<li><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></li>
</MTEntries>
</MTEntryCategories>
</ul>

If I put this in my individual archive template, I will have a list of entries related to the entry category. It does the trick. But, there was a problem when an entry was assigned to some categories. I use lastn="3" attribute to display only last three entries. if an entry as assigned to more than one category, e.g. Category A, Category B and Category C, I will have 9 entries displayed. I only wanted to display similar entries, based on the primary category.

I had a short discussion with Arvind Satyanarayan and Girlie about this. Girlie suggested MTRelatedEntries plugin. It does not work with dynamic publishing. And, she suggested me to use Smarty. Oh my, I am no Smarty expert. But, I gave it a try. This is the code I use:

{{capture assign="category"}}<$MTEntryCategory$>{{/capture}}
<ul>
<MTEntries lastn="3" category="`$category`">
<li><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>" title="<$MTEntryTitle$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></li>
</MTEntries>
</ul>

It works without problem. Great! The above tips has been tested in Movable Type 3.34 with dynamic publishing.

• February 13th, 2007 • # 7:09 pm