Combine Image and Post Views

If you want to combine images and posts in a streamlined view, such as “My 10 Most Recent Updates” with links to the items, you can combine the views in the presentation layer.

1. Retrieve images and posts.

First, let’s grab the last ten updates of both images and posts.

$image_ids = new Find('images');
$image_ids->page(1, 10);
$image_ids->published();
$image_ids->privacy('public');
$image_ids->sort('image_published', 'DESC');
$image_ids->find();

$images = new Image($image_ids);
// Optionally perform methods here such as formatTime()

$post_ids = new Find('posts');
$post_ids->page(1, 10);
$post_ids->published();
$post_ids->sort('post_published', 'DESC');
$post_ids->find();

$posts = new Post($post_ids);
// Optionally perform methods here such as formatTime()

2. Design a combined view block.

Here’s a simple Canvas template (recent_updates.html) with our two kinds:

{block:Images}
    <a href="{Image_URI}">{Image_Title}</a>
{/block:Images}

{block:Posts}
    <a href="{Post_URI}">{Post_Title}</a>
{/block:Posts}

3. Display the results.

Display the Canvas block in the order of data published. Here’s a working PHP snippet for this example:

$count = 10; // Show 10 items total
$i = 0;
$p = 0;

$index_original = new Canvas;
$index_original->load('recent_updates'); // recent_updates.html in our theme directory is our Canvas combined view block

// We'll initiate a loop that will count
for($n=0; $n < $count; $n++){
    $index = clone $index_original;
    if(strtotime($images->images[$i]['image_published']) > strtotime($posts->posts[$p]['post_published'])){
        $index->loop($images, $i, 1);
        $index->display();
        $i++;
    }
    else{
        $index->loop($posts, $p, 1);
        $index->display();
        $p++;
    }
}