How can I access articles from subcategories in a blog layout?

Question

I'm trying to create a blog override to display all subcategories (of the current category) as a sort of secondary nav/filter, and and then display only the articles of the selected/active subcategory. I want the user to be able to jump between subcategories and see their articles without being directed to different pages, so I thought a special blog.php override would make the most sense.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to call the articles of a subcategory once the category is selected.

I understand that the

<?php foreach ($this->children[$this->category->id] as $id => $child): ?>

finds each subcategory, but I'm not sure how to access the articles of that subcategory.

Answer 1

hmm... well you have the category id, so you could either directly call the articles from the database, or better use the Joomla Model to get the articles of each category, within the blog_children.php template.

$model = JModelList::getInstance('Articles', 'ContentModel', array('ignore_request'=>true));

$appParams = JFactory::getApplication()->getParams();
$model->setState('params', $appParams);
$model->setState('filter.category_id', $child->id);
$items = $model->getItems();


foreach ($items as $item) {
    echo "<div class='span12'>";
    echo $item->title;
    echo "</div>";
}

Hope this will take you closer to what you want achieve.