Texpattern context demo

Current global context
SectionArticle
context_demo144

Article context: Article tags

article is Txp’s workhorse tag. Normally there should be an article tag available in every global context. (Indeed, if your site is in Testing or Debugging mode, a missing article tag triggers a warning.)

article is always context-sensitive, responding only to global context. It retrieves any articles belonging to that context, and displays each article using the code in the specified article form (or contained in the article tag itself).

If there is global article context (i.e., an individual article page), article runs its article form (or enclosed content) in that context. That is, it displays the individual article, using the article form as a template. In any other global context, article produces a list. It creates a local article context for each article and passes each context to the article form in turn. That is, it displays all the articles in the list, again using the article form as a template. (You can specify different forms for article lists and for individual articles.) article is therefore context-setting as well as context-sensitive.

You can control how many articles are selected, and how they are sorted and paginated, with the limit, offset, sort, and pageby attributes. Beyond that, the selection depends entirely on the global context. Most global contexts will cause article to display something; the main exceptions are contexts specific to other content types, such as image-category context.

Txp newcomers tend to want to use article_custom instead, because its behavior is simple: you tell it explicitly what articles to select. But without article you miss the main strengths of Txp. Take the time and effort to come to grips with how article works. Once you get the hang of it, it is an elegant and powerful tool.

I can’t show you a working example of article within this context — global article context — because that would create a circular reference and cause the universe to implode. (Continue through the demo to find more examples of article in different contexts.) Instead, here’s an arbitrary example showing how article_custom creates a local article context that overrides the global one, then vanishes when the tag closes.

This code:

<ol>
	<li>
		<ul>
			<li>This is <b>global</b> article context:</li>
			<li>URL: <code><txp:permlink /></code></li>
			<li>Title: <cite><txp:title /></cite></li>
		</ul>
	</li>
<txp:article_custom id="118, 24, 2" break="li">
	<ul style="background: #eed; font-size: 85%;">
		<li>Override with a <b>local</b> article context:</li>
		<li>URL: <code><txp:permlink /></code></li>
		<li>Title: <cite><txp:title /></cite></li>
	</ul>
</txp:article_custom>
	<li>
		<ul>
			<li>Back to <b>global</b> article context:</li>
			<li>URL: <code><txp:permlink /></code></li>
			<li>Title: <cite><txp:title /></cite></li>
		</ul>
	</li>
</ol>

produces this output:

    • This is global article context:
    • URL: http://ipsedixit.net/context_demo/144/article-tags
    • Title: Article tags
    • Override with a local article context:
    • URL: http://ipsedixit.net/txp/118/textpattern-multisite-setup
    • Title: Textpattern multisite setup
    • Override with a local article context:
    • URL: http://ipsedixit.net/txp/24/multidoc
    • Title: Multidoc
    • Override with a local article context:
    • URL: http://ipsedixit.net/info/2/contact
    • Title: Contact
    • Back to global article context:
    • URL: http://ipsedixit.net/context_demo/144/article-tags
    • Title: Article tags