Displaying only one related entry per list

Question

I'm working on a site which has a series of tours, some of which are related (using playa) for when a tour is available on alternateive dates.

The problem I have is I want to display a list of all the tours, but instead of showing the title, link and date for all of them. If a tour has an alternative date/relationship it displays the title once with the alternative dates listed underneath. So it outputs like this:

Tour title 1
- Date a (links to Tour title 1 page)

Tour title 2
- Date b (links to Tour title 2 page)
- Date c (links to Tour title 3 page)
- Date d (links to Tour title 4 page)

Tour title 5
- Date e (links to Tour title 5 page)
- Date f (links to Tour title 6 page)

Tour title 7 (links to Tour title 7 page)
- Date g (links to Tour title 8 page)

If any one could offer any advice I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

To give a bit more information about the configuration of the channels:

I have a channel for each Tour entry called 'tour', that has all the information about the tour, including date, price etc. There are some tours which might run several times a year, but may have different costs, flights etc, (which is why each has to be an entry in it's own right.) Within the 'tour' channel I have a Playa field {alternative_tour_dates} which lists all the tours. This would be used to 'link' the tours with alternative dates to each other.

This is my template which I want to show all the tours, but with the tours that have multiple dates, rather than displaying each one, it displays the tour that has the earliest date and lists the alternative dates, cost and url of the others.

{exp:channel:entries channel='tour' disable="category_fields|member_data" show_future_entries="yes" orderby="tour_date_start" sort="asc" search:tour_type="tour"}
                    <div class="unit3">
                        <div class="unit1 unitpadding grey overview">
                            <a href="{url_title_path='tours/'}"><h3>{tour_name}</h3></a>
                            <h4>Tour Director: {tour_to_tour_personnel}<a href="{site_url}tour-directors/{url_title}">{tour_director_name_first} {tour_director_name_last}<br /></a>{/tour_to_tour_personnel}</h4>
                            <ul>
                                <li><a href="{site_url}tours/{url_title}">{tour_date_start format="%j %F"} &ndash; {tour_date_end format="%j %F %Y"}</a> <span class="price">&pound;{tour_base_price}</span></li>
                                <li>{alternative_tour_dates}<a href="{site_url}tours/{url_title}">{tour_date_start format="%j %F"} &ndash; {tour_date_end format="%j %F %Y"}</a> <span class="price">&pound;{tour_base_price}</span>{/alternative_tour_dates}</li>
                            </ul>
                        </div>
                    </div>
{/exp:channel:entries}

Once again thanks for input so far.

Answer 1

I am going to give you a solution that would work not knowing how your channel entries are set up if i had more information i know i could figure this out for you with playa, however this solution will work just fine.

IF Tour titles and Dates are a one to many relationship meaning you are having for each Tour title 1 or more dates associated to it. You could accomplish it this way.

Create a tour title category group and create categories for each tour title. We'll say for the example it is category group 1.

Create a channel thats your tour date and information, and associate each one to a category in the group.

Now for code.

Create a separate template with your code in it for the tour dates.

File path: temlates/default_site/yourtemplate.group/_dates.html

<h1>{embed:tour_title}</h1>
{exp:channel:entries channel="tour_dates" category="{embed:cat_id}"}
   {!-- Your tour dates data --}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Then embed that template from your tour title template passing data into the two variables specified above "tour_title" and "cat_id".

{exp:channel:categories category_group="cat_id_of_tour_group"}
   {!-- now we are going to loop through every category that has data assoiated with it in your system and pass the specific cat id and title through to the other template we created to generate the specific data needed. --}
   {embed="yourtemplate/_dates" cat_id="{category_id}" tour_title="{category_name}"}
{/exp:channel:categories}

Like I said this isn't a solution using playa, but because of your limited information i had to come up with a more standard native EE solution.

Answer 2

Assuming that the alternate dates are related to the "parent" tour via a Playa field in each "alternate" entry (so the alternate dates are "children"), you'd simply do this:

{exp:channel:entries channel="tours"}
    <h3>{title}</h3>
    <ul>
        <li><a href="{title_permalink="tours/view"}">{tour_date}</a></li>
        {exp:playa:children channel="tours" field="parent_tour"}
        <li><a href="{title_permalink="tours/view"}">{tour_date}</a></li>
        {/exp:playa:children}
    </ul>
{/exp:channel:entries}

(Your channel and field names will differ obviously.)