How to override/customize pagination links?

Question

In my component, I am using Joomla default pagination calling $this->pagination->getPagesLinks() in the view template file.

Say, my component url is like this at a certain point: http://localhost/joomla/index.php/menu-item-name?cid=79&tid=3 and when a page link is clicked, I want that url to omit the component related parameters (cid=79&tid=3). So when going to the desired page, that url becomes http://localhost/joomla/index.php/menu-item-name?start=2.

So how do I achieve this? What pagination class functions can I override? I could not find a way because if I override getPagesLinks() in the JPagination class, it would not work because pagination links are generated from template's overridden files too.

Please help me in both Joomla 2.5 and 3

Edit: Ok, I implemented router.php. In it's build() function...

$segments[] = $query['cid'];
$segments[] = $query['tid'];
if (isset($query['start'])) {
    $segments[] = $query['start'];
    unset($query['start']);
}
unset($query['cid']);
unset($query['tid']);
unset($query['view']);

and in the parse() function...

$vars['view'] = 'category';
$vars['cid'] = $segments[0];
$vars['tid'] =  $segments[1];
$vars['start'] =  $segments[2];
return $vars;

So when I load my component without any variables in the url, the next page link in pagination becomes http://localhost/joomla3.3/menu-item-name/2, even when component has some variables in the url then the url look like http://localhost/joomla3.3/menu-item-name/4/79/2. Both of these urls' last 2 is the pagination's page value (like start=2), but when I click a page link, it's not going to next page but staying and loading some items in same page.

So how do I make the pagination links work with router because I don't simply want ?start=2 to be added to the end of the url.

Answer 1

It sounds like you don't have a router.php for your extension to create the SEF URLs. If you look at the JPagination class you'll see that it calls JRoute::_() when it builds the links for the pagination elements, e.g.

$data->start->base = '0';
$data->start->link = JRoute::_($params . '&' . $this->prefix . 'limitstart=0');
$data->previous->base = $page;
$data->previous->link = JRoute::_($params . '&' . $this->prefix . 'limitstart=' . $page);

The Joomla Doc's website has an article that covers "Supporting SEF URLs in your component" for Joomla 2.5+. There's also an article on SEF URL's in general for Joomla.

There's also a new JRouter implementation in 3.3+ which is faster but I'm not sure if that affects implementation specifics.

Update: Here's some details on the changes that were merged into J3.3

Answer 2

There is the issue with joomla pagination - you need to keep track of both start and limitstart as far as I know, because pagination link is:

<a href="#" onclick="document.adminForm.limitstart.value=5; Joomla.submitform();return false;">2</a>

And hidden input is also

<input type="hidden" name="limitstart" value="0">

So I believe if you'll keep track of this - you'll be fine.

---

But what if you-ll avoid this problem at all? Joomla pagination works in <form> so if you'll add

<form method="POST">

it will respect it end send your listlimit value quietly.