Previous/Next Entries with custom URL

Question

I am building a site where the URLs of a blog entry look like:

/blog/2012/04/url_title

I am building out these urls by using entry_date. My links look like:

/blog/{entry_date format="%Y"}/{entry_date format="%m"}/{url_title}

The one thing I have not been able to figure out is how to use the Next/Previous Entries tags. Entry date values are not available in this tag pair so I have no way of grabbing the date values of the entry.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Entry linking plugin would help you.

Answer 2

Nearby Entries will probably be your best bet as it includes the required parameters in your example: year, month, and url_title.

By way of a similar example for /year/month/day/url_title format:

<div class="nextprev nextprev-single">
    <div class="nav-previous">
        <span class="nextprev-arrow">&lsaquo;</span>
        {exp:nearby_entries:prev this_urltitle="{segment_4}" this_channel="blog" debug="n" limit="1"}
        <a href="{path=/}<?php echo date("Y/m/d", "{nearby:entry_date}"); ?>/{nearby:url_title}">
            <span class="nextprev-post">Previous Post</span>
            <span class="nextprev-single-link-title">{nearby:title}</span>
        </a>
        {/exp:nearby_entries:prev}
    </div><!-- /.nav-previous -->
    <div class="nav-next">
        {exp:nearby_entries:next this_urltitle="{segment_4}" this_channel="blog" debug="n" limit="1"}
        <a href="{path=/}<?php echo date("Y/m/d", "{nearby:entry_date}"); ?>/{nearby:url_title}">
            <span class="nextprev-post">Next Post</span>
            <span class="nextprev-single-link-title">{nearby:title}</span>
        </a>
        {/exp:nearby_entries:next}
        <span class="nextprev-arrow">&rsaquo;</span>
    </div><!-- /.nav-next -->
</div><!-- /.nextprev -->

Just be sure to set PHP parsing to 'inward' for your template.

Answer 3

Thanks to both Bhashkar and Ian. I ended up using the Entry Linking plugin and CE:String like so:

{exp:entry_linking entry_id="{entry_id}" link="prev" channel="blog" status="open" mode="full" parse="inward"}
    <a href="/blog/{exp:ce_str:ing php}<?php echo date('Y/m', '{link_entry_date}'); ?>{/exp:ce_str:ing}/{link_url_title}">{link_title}</a>
{/exp:entry_linking}

The one drawback to the Entry Linking plugin is that you can't pass formatting to the entry_date like: {link_entry_date format="%Y/%m"} but luckily I was able to use PHP to convert the date for my purpose.

Answer 4

I think the easiest method would be to use Advanced Prev Next Entry.

entry_date vars are in fact available in this tag pair. I know because I just tested it for you :)

{exp:channel:entries channel="blog"}

    {exp:bbr_prevnext_entry current_url_title="{segment_4}" channel_name="blog" orderby="entry_date" sort="asc" cycle="yes"}

        <a class="prev" href="/blog/{entry_date format="%Y"}/{entry_date format="%m"}/{prev_url_title}/">Previous</a>  
        <a class="next" href="/blog/{entry_date format="%Y"}/{entry_date format="%m"}/{next_url_title}/">Next</a>

    {/exp:bbr_prevnext_entry}

{/exp:channel:entries}

Use this and forget about having to mess with turning on PHP or using a second add-on ;)

Note: make sure your orderby and sort are set the same on your listing page as they are set in the bbr_prevnext_entry params (or rather vice versa) other wise things could appear out of order.

Bonus: APNE allows you to do a full circle with your entries via the cycle param. Not something that comes standard with core Next/Previous Entry Linking tags to my knowledge.