Movable Type Community Forum > Detecting The Current Page For A Dynamic Menu

bwells

Jan 6 2009, 12:56 PM

Hi, I'm working on my first MT site. Its at http://prototypes.wcctechhelp.com/mt/, and I'm using version 4.21.

For the main navigation/menu at the top, I want MT to automatically add class="current" to the <li>. Problem is, mt:PageBasename returns nothing for the Home and News pages, which are actually index templates, not "pages" in the MT sense. To make it more complex, I want to leave "News" highlighted while a user is browsing a monthly archive, or individual entry page.

Is there such a thing as a tag that tells you the URL of what your currently browsing, regardless of whether its an index template, or archive, or page?

Here's the code I'm using:

CODE

<div id="menu">
<div class="container">
<ul>
   <li <mt:if var="CurrentPage" eq="home">class="current"</mt:If>><a href="<mt:blogURL />" title="">Home</a></li>
   <li <mt:if var="CurrentPage" eq="news">class="current"</mt:if>><a href="<mt:link template="Acacia News Archive">" title="">News</a></li>

   <mt:pages sort_by="title" sort_order="ascend">
      <li <mt:If tag="PageBasename" eq="$CurrentPage">class="current"</mt:If>><a href="<mt:pagepermalink>" title=""><mt:pagetitle /></a></li>
   </mt:pages>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

Thanks in advance for any help!

caribou sue

Jan 7 2009, 09:06 AM

Hi,
Yes, you can do this. You just need to set $currentpage within the pages listing.

Here's an example that lists the pages in the current folder, and gives the current page a class of "current".

CODE

QUOTE (bwells @ Jan 6 2009, 12:56 PM)

Hi, I'm working on my first MT site. Its at http://prototypes.wcctechhelp.com/mt/, and I'm using version 4.21.

For the main navigation/menu at the top, I want MT to automatically add class="current" to the <li>. Problem is, mt:PageBasename returns nothing for the Home and News pages, which are actually index templates, not "pages" in the MT sense. To make it more complex, I want to leave "News" highlighted while a user is browsing a monthly archive, or individual entry page.

Is there such a thing as a tag that tells you the URL of what your currently browsing, regardless of whether its an index template, or archive, or page?

Here's the code I'm using:

CODE

<div id="menu">
<div class="container">
<ul>
   <li <mt:if var="CurrentPage" eq="home">class="current"</mt:If>><a href="<mt:blogURL />" title="">Home</a></li>
   <li <mt:if var="CurrentPage" eq="news">class="current"</mt:if>><a href="<mt:link template="Acacia News Archive">" title="">News</a></li>

   <mt:pages sort_by="title" sort_order="ascend">
      <li <mt:If tag="PageBasename" eq="$CurrentPage">class="current"</mt:If>><a href="<mt:pagepermalink>" title=""><mt:pagetitle /></a></li>
   </mt:pages>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

Thanks in advance for any help!

bwells

Jan 7 2009, 03:39 PM

That code works great for the pages, however it doesn't work for the Home page (actually an index template, not an MT "page"), or for any of the archive pages. I think the problem is that mt:PageTitle does not return any value when it is called from an index template or archive page.

Is there an equivalent of mt:PageTitle that will work for index templates or archive pages?

Thanks!

caribou sue

Jan 7 2009, 06:02 PM

Nice looking site, by the way!

You're right -- MT is trying to define the current page's title, and of course it can't if you're not on a page.

You can get around that with template tags that tell MT only to find the page title when it's a page archive:

CODE

<MTIfArchive archive_type="page">


<MTSetVarBlock name="thispage"><MTPageTitle></MTSetVarBlock>


</MTIfArchive>


<MTPages>


<MTIfArchive archive_type="page">


<MTIf tag="pagetitle" eq="$thispage">


<li class="current">


</MTIf>


</MTIfArchive>


<li>


</MTPages>