Pagination for Static Templates

Note: The archive pagination feature was added in MT4.3 and MT5.

Movable Type publishes archives of entries based upon date, category, author and combinations thereof, and also creates links to navigate between these archives. This is done to minimize the amount of publishing when content changes. But this solution is not ideal because based upon the frequency of publishing the number of entries on each archive may vary significantly.

Many desired to have a solution that displayed a standard number of entries per page with links to navigate chronologically through them. To provide this solution, many people have created multiple index templates, one per page of entries. Using a combination of the lastn and offset attributes of the mt:Entries tag and hard-coding navigation between the index templates they were able to create “pagination”.

There were a few drawbacks of to using multiple index templates as a pagination solution:

• Increased publishing times. Each time a new entry is published all of the index templates have to be republished as all of the entries are shifted back one page.
• Doesn’t Scale. Once the number of published entries divided by the number of entries per page exceeds the number of of “static pagination” index templates. Once a viewer navigates to the last page, if there are older entries they must now view the entries in date-based archives.

Pagination in Movable Type 4.3 and 5.x

The pagination solution added in Movable Type 4.3 uses static publishing for the first page and then uses the MT-Search scripts to dynamically render pages 2 through N. Pagination can be used on index or archive template.

Note: This method of pagination can be combined with the above static pagination solution by passing a hard-coded offset once jumping from the statically published pages to the dynamically published pages.

Below is an overview of the new search parameters for pagination and some sample templates showing how to implement pagination.

Warning: If there are multiple mt:Entries loops in a template, use the search_results attribute on the mt:Entries block tag to define which mt:Entries block to use:

<mt:Entries limit="$entries_per_page" search_results="1">
  <!-- content tags here -->
</mt:Entries>

Security

Entry pagination passes the request to the search template in order to display the search results. Search requires pages to be displayed using CGI, thus if PHP/ASP code is used in these templates it can’t be executed and data not designed to be viewed by the end user will be displayed. Although there are ways to run PHP under CGI, the following barriers have been put in place:

• Only allow the templateid parameter when the archivetype parameter exists.
• Force the template being used to match the archive type (e.g. if you’re trying to paginate category archives, the template you’re using has to be one that is producing category archives).
• Not allow the use of the template_id parameter when the extension is php or asp.
• SearchAlwaysAllowTemplateID config directive when set to 1 will allow the use of template_id to not have to match the Archive Type (and Template Type for index templates).

Conditioning Static and Dynamic Content is possible if PHP/ASP is used in templates can be conditioned.

Search Parameters for Pagination

• archive_type
• author
• category
• Date based: year / month / day
• page
• template_id

archive_type

The archive type of template being paginated.

The value “Index” may also be used to indicate use of an index template which is identified by the template_id parameter.

author

The author ID. Used to filter results by author. See template_id tip for finding the author ID.

category

The category ID. Used to filter results by category. See template_id tip for finding the category ID.

day

The 2-digit day of entries to display in a date-based archive (format: DD)

month

The 2-digit month of entries to display in a date-based archive (format: MM)

page

The page of results to display; based upon the entries per page variable and the total entries.

The value of page is used to compute the offset. If the limit (ie. entries_per_page in the code below) is 10 and page 3 is desired then page 3 will show entries 21 to 30, thus the offset is 20.

template_id

The ID of the template to use for displaying the queried entries.

Tip: Find the ID of a category, author or template by looking for the id querystring parameter in an application URL.

To use a template ID, view the template edit screen, the URL would look like this:

http://yourdomain/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=template&id=384&blog_id=1

In this case, the template ID would be 384.

year

The 4-digit year of entries to display in a date-based archive (format: YYYY)

Conditioning Static and Dynamic Content

The <mt:Entries> loop tag will be replaced with the queried entries and the value of the variable search_results can be used to condition content in the template.

For example, place this code in an index template being used for pagination to condition content based upon if the page is statically or dynamically rendered.

<mt:If name="search_results">
    Search Results are being displayed! Woot!
<mt:Else>
    Static content from normal publishing of the index template.
</mt:If>

Step by Step Tutorials and Sample templates

Note: These templates have been tested, but have not gone through a full QA review thus they were not officially bundled with any default template set.

This code is based on the Classic Blog template set, but can be used in other template sets.

Two tutorial and sample templates are available:

• Paginating the Main Index : Step by Step tutorial
• Entry Listing (for archive listing templates)

Sample Templates : Main Index

Replace the Main Index template (or any index template) with this code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" id="sixapart-standard">
<head>
    <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="<$mt:Link template="rsd"$>" />
    <title><$mt:BlogName encode_html="1"$></title>
    <$mt:Include module="HTML Head"$>
</head>
<body id="<$mt:BlogTemplateSetID$>" class="mt-main-index <$mt:Var name="page_layout"$>">
    <div id="container">
        <div id="container-inner">


            <$mt:Include module="Banner Header"$>


            <div id="content">
                <div id="content-inner">


                    <div id="alpha">
                        <div id="alpha-inner">

<mt:Ignore><!-- Set the number of entries displayed on each page. --></mt:Ignore>
<$mt:Var name="entries_per_page" value="3"$>

<mt:Ignore><!-- Construct the url for querying entries. --></mt:Ignore>
<mt:SetVarBlock name="search_link">
    <$mt:CGIPath$><$mt:SearchScript$>?IncludeBlogs=<$mt:BlogID$>
    &template_id=<$mt:BuildTemplateID$>
    &limit=<$mt:Var name="entries_per_page"$>
    &archive_type=Index
    &page=
</mt:SetVarBlock>
<mt:Ignore><!-- Strip spaces and trim value. --></mt:Ignore>
<$mt:Var name="search_link" strip="" trim="1" setvar="search_link"$>

<mt:Ignore><!-- Entries loop for publishing static and dynamic pages. --></mt:Ignore>
<mt:Entries limit="$entries_per_page" search_results="1">
    <mt:Ignore><!-- Use the Entry Summary module for each entry published on this page. --></mt:Ignore>
    <$mt:Include module="Entry Summary"$>
</mt:Entries>

<mt:Ignore><!-- Create pagination navigation. Condition based upon if page is statically or dynamically rendered using the search_results variable. --></mt:Ignore>
<mt:SetVarBlock name="pagination_navigation">
    <mt:If name="search_results">
        <mt:Ignore><!-- Navigation for dynamic pages (same as navigation found in the Search Results system template). --></mt:Ignore>
        <mt:IfPreviousResults>
            <a href="<$mt:PreviousLink$>" rel="prev" onclick="return swapContent(-1);">&lt; Previous</a>&nbsp;
        </mt:IfPreviousResults>
        <mt:PagerBlock>
            <mt:IfCurrentPage>
                <$mt:Var name="__value__"$>
            <mt:Else>
                <a href="<$mt:PagerLink$>"><$mt:Var name="__value__"$></a>
            </mt:IfCurrentPage>
        </mt:PagerBlock>
        <mt:IfMoreResults>
            &nbsp;<a href="<$mt:NextLink$>" rel="next" onclick="return swapContent();">Next &gt;</a>
        </mt:IfMoreResults>
    <mt:Else>
        <mt:Ignore><!-- Navigation for statically published page. --></mt:Ignore>
        <mt:If name="archive_template">
            <$mt:ArchiveCount setvar="total_entries"$>
        <mt:Else>
            <$mt:BlogEntryCount setvar="total_entries"$>
        </mt:If>
        <mt:Ignore><!-- If blog contains more entries than the number of entries to display per page. --></mt:Ignore>
        <mt:If name="total_entries" gt="$entries_per_page">
            <mt:Ignore><!-- Set the total number of entries to iterate through the pages. --></mt:Ignore>
            <mt:Ignore><!-- IF total entries divided by entries per page is a whole number. --></mt:Ignore>
            <mt:If name="total_entries" op="%" value="$entries_per_page" eq="0">
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Set total pages to total entries divided by entries per page. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:Var name="total_entries" op="/" value="$entries_per_page" setvar="total_pages"$>
            <mt:Else>
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Get the remainder when dividing total entries by entries per page. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:Var name="total_entries" op="%" value="$entries_per_page" setvar="remainder"$>
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Subtract remainder from total entries. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:Var name="total_entries" op="-" value="$remainder" setvar="total_entries"$>
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Determine total pages by dividing total entries (minus remainder) by entries per page. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:Var name="total_entries" op="/" value="$entries_per_page" setvar="total_pages"$>
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Add one page to handle the remainder of entries. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:SetVar name="total_pages" op="++"$>
            </mt:If>
            <mt:Ignore><!-- Loop through total pages, creating links to all but the first page (which is the current page). --></mt:Ignore>
            <mt:For from="1" to="$total_pages" step="1">
            <mt:If name="__first__">
                <$mt:Var name="__index__"$>
            <mt:Else>
                <a href="<$mt:Var name="search_link"$><$mt:Var name="__index__"$>"><$mt:Var name="__index__"$></a>
            </mt:If> 
            </mt:For>
            <mt:Ignore><!-- Hard-coded link to the next page (page 2). --></mt:Ignore>
            &nbsp;<a href="<$mt:Var name="search_link"$>2" rel="next">Next &raquo;</a>
        </mt:If>
    </mt:If>
</mt:SetVarBlock>
<mt:Ignore><!-- Strip space and trim navigation code. --></mt:Ignore>
<$mt:Var name="pagination_navigation" strip=" " trim="1" setvar="pagination_navigation"$>

<div class="content-nav">
<mt:Ignore><!-- Output variable if exists. --></mt:Ignore>
<$mt:Var name="pagination_navigation" strip=" " trim="1" setvar="pagination_navigation"$>
<mt:If name="pagination_navigation">
    <div class="pagination-navigation">
        <$mt:Var name="pagination_navigation"$>
    </div>
</mt:If>
    <a href="<$mt:Link template="archive_index"$>">Archives</a>
</div>

                        </div>
                    </div>


                    <$mt:Include module="Sidebar"$>


                </div>
            </div>


            <$mt:Include module="Banner Footer"$>


        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Entry Listing

Replace the “Monthly Entry Listing” and “Category Entry Listing” archive templates with this code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" id="sixapart-standard">
<head>
<mt:If name="archive_template">
    <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="<$mt:Link template="rsd"$>" />
</mt:If>
    <$mt:Include module="HTML Head"$>
    <title><$mt:BlogName encode_html="1"$>: <$mt:ArchiveTitle$> Archives</title>
<mt:If name="archive_template">
    <mt:If name="datebased_archive">
        <mt:ArchivePrevious><link rel="prev" href="<$mt:ArchiveLink$>" title="<$mt:ArchiveTitle encode_html="1"$>" /></mt:ArchivePrevious>
        <mt:ArchiveNext><link rel="next" href="<$mt:ArchiveLink$>" title="<$mt:ArchiveTitle encode_html="1"$>" /></mt:ArchiveNext>
    </mt:If>
</mt:If>
</head>
<body id="<$mt:BlogTemplateSetID$>" class="mt-archive-listing mt-<$mt:Var name="archive_class"$> <$mt:Var name="page_layout"$>">
    <div id="container">
        <div id="container-inner">


            <$mt:Include module="Banner Header"$>


            <div id="content">
                <div id="content-inner">


                    <div id="alpha">
                        <div id="alpha-inner">
<mt:If name="archive_template">
    <mt:If name="datebased_archive">
                            <mt:Ignore><!-- Title for category-monthly entry listings --></mt:Ignore>
                            <h1 id="page-title" class="archive-title"><$mt:ArchiveTitle$> Archives</h1>
    <mt:Else>
                            <mt:Ignore><!-- Title for category entry listings --></mt:Ignore>
                            <h1 id="page-title" class="archive-title">Recently in <em><$mt:ArchiveTitle$></em> Category</h1>
    </mt:If>
</mt:If>

<mt:Ignore><!-- Set the number of entries displayed on each page. --></mt:Ignore>
<$mt:Var name="entries_per_page" value="2"$>

<mt:Ignore><!-- Construct the url for querying entries. --></mt:Ignore>
<mt:SetVarBlock name="search_link">
    <$mt:CGIPath$><$mt:SearchScript$>?IncludeBlogs=<$mt:BlogID$>
    &template_id=<$mt:BuildTemplateID$>
    &limit=<$mt:Var name="entries_per_page"$>
    <mt:If name="archive_template">
        &archive_type=<$mt:ArchiveType$>
        <mt:If name="datebased_archive">
            &year=<$mt:ArchiveDate format='%Y'$>&month=<$mt:ArchiveDate format='%m'$>&day=<$mt:ArchiveDate format='%d'$>
        </mt:If>
        <mt:If name="category_archive">
            &category=<$mt:CategoryID$>
        </mt:If>
        <mt:If name="author_archive">
            &author=<$mt:AuthorID$>
        </mt:If>
    <mt:Else>
        &archive_type=Index
    </mt:If>
    &page=
</mt:SetVarBlock>
<mt:Ignore><!-- Strip spaces and trim value. --></mt:Ignore>
<$mt:Var name="search_link" strip="" trim="1" setvar="search_link"$>

<mt:Ignore><!-- Entries loop for publishing static and dynamic pages. --></mt:Ignore>
<mt:Entries limit="$entries_per_page" search_results="1">
    <mt:Ignore><!-- Use the Entry Summary module for each entry published on this page. --></mt:Ignore>
    <$mt:Include module="Entry Summary"$>
</mt:Entries>

<mt:Ignore><!-- Create pagination navigation. Condition based upon if page is statically or dynamically rendered using the search_results variable. --></mt:Ignore>
<mt:SetVarBlock name="pagination_navigation">
    <mt:If name="search_results">
        <mt:Ignore><!-- Navigation for dynamic pages (same as navigation found in the Search Results system template). --></mt:Ignore>
        <mt:IfPreviousResults>
            <a href="<$mt:PreviousLink$>" rel="prev" onclick="return swapContent(-1);">&lt; Previous</a>&nbsp;
        </mt:IfPreviousResults>
        <mt:PagerBlock>
            <mt:IfCurrentPage>
                <$mt:Var name="__value__"$>
            <mt:Else>
                <a href="<$mt:PagerLink$>"><$mt:Var name="__value__"$></a>
            </mt:IfCurrentPage>
        </mt:PagerBlock>
        <mt:IfMoreResults>
            &nbsp;<a href="<$mt:NextLink$>" rel="next" onclick="return swapContent();">Next &gt;</a>
        </mt:IfMoreResults>
    <mt:Else>
        <mt:Ignore><!-- Navigation for statically published page. --></mt:Ignore>
        <mt:If name="archive_template">
            <$mt:ArchiveCount setvar="total_entries"$>
        <mt:Else>
            <$mt:BlogEntryCount setvar="total_entries"$>
        </mt:If>
        <mt:Ignore><!-- If blog contains more entries than the number of entries to display per page. --></mt:Ignore>
        <mt:If name="total_entries" gt="$entries_per_page">
            <mt:Ignore><!-- Set the total number of entries to iterate through the pages. --></mt:Ignore>
            <mt:Ignore><!-- IF ` divided by entries per page is a whole number. --></mt:Ignore>
            <mt:If name="total_entries" op="%" value="$entries_per_page" eq="0">
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Set total pages to total entries divided by entries per page. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:Var name="total_entries" op="/" value="$entries_per_page" setvar="total_pages"$>
            <mt:Else>
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Get the remainder when dividing total entries by entries per page. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:Var name="total_entries" op="%" value="$entries_per_page" setvar="remainder"$>
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Subtract remainder from total entries. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:Var name="total_entries" op="-" value="$remainder" setvar="total_entries"$>
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Determine total pages by dividing total entries (minus remainder) by entries per page. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:Var name="total_entries" op="/" value="$entries_per_page" setvar="total_pages"$>
                <mt:Ignore><!-- Add one page to handle the remainder of entries. --></mt:Ignore>
                <$mt:SetVar name="total_pages" op="++"$>
            </mt:If>
            <mt:Ignore><!-- Loop through total pages, creating links to all but the first page (which is the current page). --></mt:Ignore>
            <mt:For from="1" to="$total_pages" step="1">
            <mt:If name="__first__">
                <$mt:Var name="__index__"$>
            <mt:Else>
                <a href="<$mt:Var name="search_link"$><$mt:Var name="__index__"$>"><$mt:Var name="__index__"$></a>
            </mt:If> 
            </mt:For>
            <mt:Ignore><!-- Hard-coded link to the next page (page 2). --></mt:Ignore>
            &nbsp;<a href="<$mt:Var name="search_link"$>2" rel="next">Next &raquo;</a>
        </mt:If>
    </mt:If>
</mt:SetVarBlock>
<mt:Ignore><!-- Strip space and trim navigation code. --></mt:Ignore>
<$mt:Var name="pagination_navigation" strip=" " trim="1" setvar="pagination_navigation"$>

<div class="content-nav">
<mt:Ignore><!-- Output variable if exists. --></mt:Ignore>
<$mt:Var name="pagination_navigation" strip=" " trim="1" setvar="pagination_navigation"$>
<mt:If name="pagination_navigation">
    <div class="pagination-navigation">
        <$mt:Var name="pagination_navigation"$>
    </div>
</mt:If>
    <mt:ArchivePrevious><a href="<$mt:ArchiveLink$>">&laquo; <$mt:ArchiveTitle$></a> |</mt:ArchivePrevious>
    <a href="<$mt:Link template="main_index"$>">Main Index</a> |
    <a href="<$mt:Link template="archive_index"$>">Archives</a>
    <mt:ArchiveNext>| <a href="<$mt:ArchiveLink$>"><$mt:ArchiveTitle$> &raquo;</a></mt:ArchiveNext>
</div>

                        </div>
                    </div>


                    <$mt:Include module="Sidebar"$>


                </div>
            </div>


            <$mt:Include module="Banner Footer"$>


        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>