Tela-Web

Another taxonomy term list for Drupal

June 15th, 2007 tela

In my previous post I exposed one method how to make a list of the taxonomy terms with Drupal. This method was using the Taxonomy Menu module. However this method has some limitations.

One is that it creates specific URL for the menu item link. It doesn’t use the existing URL for the taxonomy term: /taxonomy/term/[term-ID]

It links to a page with a URL that looks like this: /taxonomy_menu/[vocabulary-ID]/[term-ID]

This can be a problem for example when you want to use a module like Pathauto to automatically generate URL aliases. The pages created by the Taxonomy Menu module are not managed by the Pathauto module. So it you want to keep a coherent naming system for your URLs you will need to change manually the URL aliases for these pages.

There is another limitation regarding its “SEO friendliness”. I think it’s always a good thing to use the title attribute in the <a> tag. This feature doesn’t come standard with Taxonomy Menu module. So if you want it, you need to manually edit each menu item to add a description.

Considering these limitations, and a process that is somehow quite complex, I have found another method which involves the use of a php block snippet.

This is a one step method.

You just need to create a new block: go to Administer > Site building > Blocks and click Add block.

Fill in the different fields:

• Block description: this is the text used on the Blocks overview page.
• Block title: this is the title that is displayed on the website.
• Block body: copy and paste the code below:

<?php
$vid = 1; /* <---- put correct vocabulary ID here */
$terms = taxonomy_get_tree($vid);
print "<ul>";
foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
print "<li>".
l($term->name,'taxonomy/term/'.$term->tid, array('title' => $term->name)).
"</li>";
} /* end foreach */
print "</ul>";
?>

• Select the correct Input format under Block body: PHP code.

Save the block.

On the Blocks overview page, locate the newly created block under Disabled. Select where you want to display your block from the dropdown list.

You’re done.

You can see this in action in the last website we created with Drupal: Tela-Group.com

Entry Filed under: Drupal