Wednesday’s Expression Engine snippet

9th November 2006

Where is this week going? Anyway, no time for such philosophical questions, it’s time to get dynamic with Expression Engine.

Hidden away in the EE docs is an absolute gem that I’d seriously overlooked until recently. I’m talking about the ability to dynamically change parameters in your weblog tags by using dynamic parameters.

I’ll get away with being lazy today, and let the docs explain the code. But I will say that the beauty of this function appears when you’re using weblogs to do non-weblog type stuff. Remember that in Expression Engine, weblogs are really data-containers, with their data-structure editable using custom entry fields. So if you’re building any kind of directory, listing, catalogue, real-estate site using weblogs, adding in dynamic parameters enables your users to quickly sort / filter / drill-down to what they’re looking for.

I’ll leave it at that for today, and tomorrow I’ll talk you through building a quick “what’s on” page with dynamic listings. Toodle-pip!

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