How to get links to all calendar/tag pages

[aardvarkk]

Expected behaviour

• I'd like to display links to all other pages on the calendar/tag pages within a given calendar/tag page.

Actual behaviour

• I'm only able to obtain prev_page and next_page links, and can't figure out a clean interface by which to obtain links to all of the other pages.

Additional information

• Ruby version: 2.3.8
• Middleman version: 4.3.4
• Middleman Blog version: 4.0.3
• OS version: macOS 10.14.5

[tdreyno]

Looks like you are right, that data for the full set is never captured or shared with templates:

It kind of happens here:
https://github.com/middleman/middleman-blog/blob/master/lib/middleman-blog/paginator.rb#L51-L64

Where would it make sense to share that data? Along side prev_page and next_page variables? I can refactor things to make that possible.

[aardvarkk]

I started to look into making a variable called page_list that would just contain an array of all of the resources. I did find exactly that section of the code that you linked to and that's where I started making changes.

What I managed to do instead was to hack together a helper that would keep wandering through prev_page and next_page until there were none left. So I would keep accessing current_resource.locals['prev_page'] and building up an array as I walked through. It was pretty hacky but it worked without me needing to change any code in middleman-blog.

If this is a pretty fringe request I don't mind if you close it off given that there is a workaround -- it just took me quite a while to try to figure out how I could get a list of all the pages and I felt like other people might also want to do that.

[tdreyno]

That's clever. Can you put your solution code here for future folks searching for this?

[aardvarkk]

Yep -- I should be able to post something tonight. I'll edit this comment with the general idea.

EDIT: Here's the code I promised. It's fairly specific to my perhaps-strange use case, but could probably be extended for other needs. I wanted only one blog article per page, but wanted to list all of the other pages for the given tag/calendar page on each page. That way, you could navigate the tags and calendar pages without losing the context of being interested in a certain calendar range or tag.

Here's the custom helper I made with some helper functions:

module CustomHelpers
  # Add an article as a Hash to the collection
  # I store the title for use as eventual link text and the path for the href
  # I pass the operation to do (either `unshift` or `push` 
  # to either prepend or append to the collection
  def add_article(operation_sym, article, collection, path = nil)
    collection.send(operation_sym, {
      title: article.title,
      path: path
    })
  end

  # Walk from a current resource to the next-oldest
  # The "next page" links to the *previous* article,
  # because articles are sorted descending chronologically
  # The key here is grabbing the next page with `current_resource.locals['next_page']`, then setting
  # that as the next "current_resource" for the recursive call
  def walk_older(current_resource, current_article, articles, collection)
    if prev_article = articles.find { |a| a.date < current_article.date }
      add_article(:push, prev_article, collection, '/' + current_resource.locals['next_page'].path)
      walk_older(current_resource.locals['next_page'], prev_article, articles, collection)
    end
  end

  # Same as above, but walking to newer articles/pages
  def walk_newer(current_resource, current_article, articles, collection)
    if next_article = articles.reverse.find { |a| a.date > current_article.date }
      add_article(:unshift, next_article, collection, '/' + current_resource.locals['prev_page'].path)
      walk_newer(current_resource.locals['prev_page'], next_article, articles, collection)
    end
  end
end

Here's how I use it in the template:

          <% newer = [] %>
          <% walk_newer(current_resource, current_article, articles, newer) %>
          <% older = [] %>
          <% walk_older(current_resource, current_article, articles, older) %>

          <% newer.each do |article| %>
            <li><%= link_to article[:title], article[:path] %></li>
          <% end %>

          <li><%= current_article.title %></li>

          <% older.each do |article| %>
            <li><%= link_to article[:title], article[:path] %></li>
          <% end %>

[markets]

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