Counting pages/posts

Hello,

In the latest update, I extended the Math module (enabled under Settings) – so you can count loops of any kind, by using the [calc] shortcode and variables.

[calc] total = 0 [/calc] ..or you can use: [set total]0[/set]

[loop]
  [calc] total = total + 1 [/calc]
[/loop]

Total: [calc]total[/calc] ..or you can use: [get total]

Eliot, thank you. I’m just getting back into using CCS for a new project, so I’m a bit rusty. Could you help me a little more. Let’s say I want to create a loop that lists all the child pages of the current page, ideally while matching a custom field as well. In my last project I used posts, so I could use categories and tags, but since this one is using pages, I need to match to a custom field.

The basic architecture of my encyclopedia is that there are topic pages and resource pages. Topic pages list all child topic pages (child topics would be states/provinces if they exist), and then list all the child resource pages in up to about 5 sections (set by custom field).

So when I load a country page, which is a topic, let’s say for the United States, I need to show that there are 50 child pages for each state (child pages that match the type ‘topic’ and the area ‘province’), then within each section (History, Contemporary, etc.) it shows the child pages of type ‘resource’ that also match the corresponding section (History, etc.).

Each time I show a child topic (i.e. a state/province) I want to show how many resources are listed in that topic (i.e. how many child pages of type ‘resource’ there are). Each time I show a resource on a topic page, I want to show how many comments there are on that page.

For example, it might look something like:

United States

Regions:
Alabama (20) Colorado (60)
Alaska (54) Connecticut (45)
Arizona (34) Delaware (34)
Arkansas (65) Florida (66)
California (145) Georgia (34) ….

History
Source Name Comments
Wikipedia History of the United States 5

Books
Source Name Comments
OUP Oxford History of the US 6

So in the above example, it shows all the provinces at the top (I put 10, but you get the idea) and shows how many resources are listed on each province page (i.e. 20 child pages of page Alabama of the type ‘resource’). There are then two categories that have resources for the United States page itself, History and Books. Under each category I show one resource, with the info all grabbed from custom fields for the resource page (except the number of comments – can I access that through CSC?). For each resource, the name would link to the actual resource (a URL grabbed from a custom field from the resource page) and the comment number would link to the resource page itself which could display all the custom fields (for the book maybe the cover photo, the publisher, author etc.) and would allow users to comment on the resource using standard WordPress comments.

Sorry for all that detail. If you can point me in the right direction I’d be very grateful.

I see I should have put my example in a code bracket to preserve spacing, but you get the idea.

Woo, I see, that is quite a data structure to manage.

A couple things I think will help:

[loop-count] displays the total post count, after a loop is finished. So, theoretically, you could use a loop with empty content, then display the total:

Alabama ([loop type=...][/loop][loop-count])

If you’re already in a loop, you can use [-loop].

Maybe I’ll think of a simpler way to show total post count without an empty loop. It could be like: [loop-count type=... taxonomy=..]

For each page/post, [comment count] will display the total comment count.

Thanks.

Sorry because I’m sure this is simple, but I just can’t find it in the docs.

How do I create a loop that matches pages that have a custom field that matches a specific value?

Right now I’m trying to display a section of resources for a country, which I have coded as follows:

[loop exists type="page" parent=this]
	<h3>History</h3>
	<table>
	<tr><th>Source</th><th>Resource</th><th>Comments</th>
	[the-loop]
	<tr><td>[acf field="source"]</td><td>[acf field="name"]</td><td><a href="[field url]">[comment count]</a></td></tr>
	[/the-loop]
	</table>
	[/loop]

The first line needs to match a specific custom field value, as I’ve several section of links, and I was planning to have a similar section of code for each type of resource. In this case it’s history links, and I need to check a custom field to see if it matches the word history. I could see also needing to match two custom fields in the future, if that works any differently. Thanks for your help.

Looking at ACF I don’t see the acf tag anymore – is the preferred way now to use just field? I remember having some trouble with that a couple of years ago when doing that.

I’ve replaced the acf with just field and it’s working. I’ve also modified my code from above to the following, although it still doesn’t just select the child pages that match a custom field:

[loop child=this include=this]
  [if not first] > [/if][field title-link]
[/loop]
<div id="zebra">
	[loop exists type="page" parent=this]
	<h3>History</h3>
	<table>
	<tr><th>Source</th><th>Resource</th><th>Language</th><th>Comments</th>
	[the-loop]
	<tr><td>[field source]</td><td><a href="[field url]">[field name]<a/> [if field="local_url"](<a href="[field local_url]">local</a>)[/if]</td><td>[field language]</td><td><a href="[field url]">[comment count]</a></td></tr>
	[/the-loop]
	</table>
	[/loop]
</div>

I have a question about the breadcrumb code at the top. I used your example code, but switched from title to title-link to allow the user to jump to the previous pages in the hierarchy. The problem is that the current page also becomes a link. Is there a way to have all pages higher in the hierarchy be links, while the current page is not?

Thanks.

Okay, I got how to get the section type in the loop, and now my code works pretty well:

[loop child=this include=this]
  [if not first] > [/if][field title-link]
[/loop]
<div id="zebra">
[pass list="Section1,Section2,Section3,Section4"]
	[loop exists type="page" parent=this field=section value={ITEM}]
	<h3>{Item}</h3>
	<table>
	<tr><th>Source</th><th>Resource</th><th>Language</th><th>Comments</th>
	[the-loop]
	<tr><td>[field source]</td><td><a href="[field url]">[field name]<a/> [if field="local_url"](<a href="[field local_url]">local</a>)[/if]</td><td>[field language]</td><td><a href="[field url]">[comment count]</a></td></tr>
	[/the-loop]
	</table>
	[/loop]
[/pass]
</div>

All I need now is to figure out how to remove the link for the last breadcrumb.

So I’ve finally gotten to implementing the count for the index page, with the following code:

[pass list="A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z"]
[loop exists type="page" parent=this field=alpha value={ITEM}]
<h3>{ITEM}</h3>
[the-loop]
[field title-link] ([-loop type="page" parent=this include=children field=type value="resource"][/-loop][loop-count])<br/ >
[/the-loop]
[/loop]
[/pass]

I added the include=children so it would get the pages that were the children and grandchildren of the page, however the numbers it is displaying include only the children and not the grandchildren. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

I just realized it’s not showing me the count of child pages, it’s showing me the position in the outer loop. I used -loop because I’m inside the loop, but loop-count picks up the outside loop, not the -loop.

So I solved how to not have the last breadcrumb be a link:

[loop child=this include=this]
  [if not first] > [/if][if not last][field title-link][else][field title][/if]
[/loop]

Pretty simple. I still need help figuring out how to properly display the number of resources on the main index page for each topic. It’s actually a little more complicated now since now it’s both resources and dependencies (I added dependency as a type that is only displayed in content of the primary resource it’s attached to – like a web site that has a facebook page – the fb page would be the dependency). For some reason, when I went back to test the index page was in visual mode and was throwing a 500 error. I switched it back to text mode and corrected the mistakes, but it’s still throwing a 500 error. Weird. Maybe it’s a caching problem.

Anyways, if you can help me figure out why I’m not getting the loop count of the children and grandchildren, I would greatly appreciate it.

So bizarre, that 500 Internal Error is not a caching issue. What’s really strange is I backed up to an earlier revision of the page that I know worked, and it’s still giving me the 500 error. Here’s the code, which I think it the same as above:

[pass list="A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z"]
[loop exists type="page" parent=this field=alpha value={ITEM}]
<h3>{ITEM}</h3>
[the-loop]
[field title-link] ([-loop type="page" parent=this include=children field=type value="resource"][/-loop][loop-count])<br/ >
[/the-loop]
[/loop]
[/pass]

Why would this throw a 500 error?

Removing:

([-loop type="page" parent=this include=children field=type value="resource"][loop-count][/-loop])

Gets rid of the 500 error. So now I just need to figure out what the right code is to display the number of children and grandchildren of the current item in the loop that match field ‘type’ either as ‘resource’ or ‘dependency’.

I see I put the loop-count into the loop in that last example, but that was me trying out different things. It gave the 500 error either way.