I realized while developing my plugin that October doesn't provide an option to get hierarchical URLs based on nested categories/sub-categories.
After much searching I finally came across this feature request
So where is the October team regarding this feature ?
Is there an alternative option or a workaround currently ?

Last updated 3 years ago

Do you mean for the Rainlab.Blog plugin in particular?

This comment in the thread you referenced suggests it's already supported:

https://github.com/rainlab/blog-plugin/issues/29#issuecomment-329514378

Actually Jan Vince refers to the nested category support.
But the hierarchical URLs is still not supported as you can read at the end of the thread:
So now only to solve a hierarchical URLs...

Wouldn't it be trivial to modify the component partial to build hierarchical urls out of those hierarchical categories, though?

For example, the items.htm partial would look like this:

{% for category in categories %}
    {% set postCount = category.post_count %}
    {% set url = parent ? parent.slug ~ '/' ~ category.slug : category.slug %}
    <li {% if category.slug == currentCategorySlug %}class="active"{% endif %}>
        <a href="{{ url }}">{{ category.name }}</a>
        {% if postCount %}
            <span class="badge">{{ postCount }}</span>
        {% endif %}

        {% if category.children|length > 0 %}
            <ul>
                {% partial __SELF__ ~ "::items"
                    categories=category.children
                    currentCategorySlug=currentCategorySlug
                    parent=category
                %}
            </ul>
        {% endif %}
    </li>
{% endfor %}

It's a good idea but even though it gives the correct paths I get an error
as the whole problem is about the url segments.

I tried to use the wilcard parameter

url=/category/:path*

It works as long as I don't use an optional parameter at the end of the url. But I need optional parameters like pagination id etc...

I go in circle for days on that one. I guess it could be settled in the routes.php file but I'm not skilled enough to figure out how.

Yes, I used category.slug but that bypasses the categoryPage component property... so it's better to use {{ category.url }} which means the setUrl() method in Category model needs a little overhaul to make it work with nested categories.

I already did that

    $path = $this->slug;
    $parents = $this->getParents();

    foreach ($parents as $parent) {
        $path .= $parent->slug.'/'.$path;
    }   

    $params = [ 
        'id'   => $this->id,
        'slug' => $this->slug,
        'path' => $path
    ]; 

but as I said it works as long as I don't use an optional parameter at the end of the url which is not a acceptable solution.

Last updated 3 years ago

What does your CMS category page look like?

here it is

title = "Category"
url = "/category/:path*"
layout = "default"
is_hidden = 0 

[songList]
pageNumber = "{{ :page }}" 
categoryFilter = "{{ :path }}" 
songsPerPage = 2 
noSongsMessage = "No songs found"
sortOrder = "title asc"
categoryPage = "category"
songPage = "song"
==
<div class="container col-sm-9">
{% component 'songList' %}
</div>

why don't you use this:

url = "/category/:parent/:category/:page?"

[songList]
pageNumber = "{{ :page }}" 
categoryFilter = "{{ :category }}" 

I did but again, it will work only if I'm on the second category level. eg:

http://mydomain.com/category/style/rock

and with the optional parameter:

http://mydomain.com/category/style/rock/2

Now if I go up one level it will give:

http://mydomain.com/category/default/style

or

http://mydomain.com/category/default/style/2

The null value of the parent parameter is replaced with the "default" value.
It's a catch 22 and it's due to the fact that you cannot set an optional parameter in the middle of the path. eg:

url = "/category/:parent?/:category/:page?"

:parent? won't be taken into account as an optional parameter.
I'm afraid we need the big guns for this one but I haven't found any relevant piece of information so far.

You can (in addition) create a page without the subcategory like this which will cover the case when it is not a subcategory:

url = "/category/:category/:page?"

[songList]
pageNumber = "{{ :page }}" 
categoryFilter = "{{ :category }}" 

And use a partial that will get called for both pages to render your content.

Good call! I think it's the most reasonable way to tackle this problem without too much difficulty.
However, to get it work properly a constraint has to be append to the optional parameter:

url = "/category/:category/:page?|^[0-9]+$"

otherwise http://mydomain.com/category/style/2 and http://mydomain.com/category/style/rock will match the same pattern.

Yes, exactly. Let me know how that goes.