[Typo3] Some tt_news questions

[Sandip Bhattacharya]

I have been having some difficulty using the tt_news(the latest one in
the TER) extension for this particular website of mine. Here are some
of the problems:

1. Using multiple tt_news instances in the same root template
  ----------------------------------------------------------
  I have to show the latest views of two different news categories in  
  the main template. To do this, I have configured the plugin like this 
  in the template setup:
   ===========================================================
   //Global plugin setup
   plugin.tt_news.templateFile=/path/to/template/file
   
   //first news category
   temp.generalnews < plugin.tt_news
   temp.generalnews {
        code = LATEST
        singlePid = xx
        archiveTypolink.parameter = xx
        ...
   }
   //second news category
   temp.othernews < plugin.tt_news
   temp.othernews {
        code = LATEST
        singlePid = yy
        archiveTypolink.parameter = yy
        ...
   }

   ...
   temp.mainTemplate.subparts.GENERALNEWS < temp.generalnews
   temp.mainTemplate.subparts.OTHERNEWS < temp.othernews
   ===============================================================

   Now the problem I am having with this setup, is that the links for 
   the news items of the second category(temp.othernews) are still using 
   the singlePid of the first category(temp.generalnews). I am however 
   seeing two different LIST content, just as I want. So it is partially 
   working.

   Am I doing something wrong here?

2. Is it possible to use the same page for viewing a LIST of news items 
   for different categories?

   I mean that I have one page with a LIST news instance. I want this 
   page to either show news from general *or* other(see the last 
   problem) category.

   Now I could seemingly make this work by adding a GET parameter to 
   links _coming_ to this page, and changing the pid_list on the basis 
   of this parameter.

   But this only works for the first page. If the list spills to 
   different pages, the pagebrowser links doesnt have any parameter to 
   make the pid_list stick to the one initially set.

   I am facing the same problem in using a common search page for all 
   the news categories.

   In other words, the tt_news plugin seems to make it easy to search on 
   one or more categories. But I cant make a common search or list page 
   work  on one category at a time. So if I have three category of news, 
   I need to have three different pages to show a single view, three 
   different pages to show list view, and three different pages to show 
   search results. :)

   Can someone help me out of this misery?(Short of shooting me, that 
   is. :-P). I seem to be missing something obvious here from the 
   documentation.

3. Basic Typoscript question.
   In some typoscript code snippets, I have seen code like
    plugin.tt_news {
       code >
       code = SINGLE
    }

    In this, is the line ("code >") necessary? Doesnt code = SINGLE 
    overwrite the previous value?

Thanks,
 Sandip

-- 
Sandip Bhattacharya  *    Puroga Technologies   *     sandip at puroga.com
Work: http://www.puroga.com  *   Home/Blog: http://www.sandipb.net/blog

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