idea/ concept behind creating breadcrumbs

crescent_au@yahoo.com · *nix forums beginner Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 6

Hi everybody,

I want to create dynamic breadcrumbs for a site I am developing. I just
want to get some views about the algorithm of breadcrumbs.

The way I look at it is the concept of parent/ child (main/ sub). I
have the "Home" page, which has links to sub-pages such as
"Introduction", "History", "Timetable", etc. Each page can have other
sub-pages, such as "Timetable" can have "Semester1", "Semester2", etc.
This is how I'd initially think. Am I on the right track? If yes, how
do I proceed? Do I need a database or is there another efficient way to
do it? If it is in fact the way I am thinking, then I think I need a
way to "register" or hold the data in some way and access it on each
page. I'm just lost here.

Please push me to the right direction.

Thanks
Ben

flamer · *nix forums beginner Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 36

crescent...@yahoo.com wrote:

rlee0001 · *nix forums addict Joined: 11 Jan 2006 Posts: 53

Well if you have a database then that would be a good place to start.
If you are not currently using a database you could store the
relationships in an include file and include_once it into each page.

For a database I would do something like:

"id","pagename","parent_id"
1,"Home",0
2,"Introduction",1
3,"History",1
4,"Timetable",1
5,"Semester1",4
6,"Semester2",4
....

Then use a recursive function to "walk" up and down the tree:

function printnode($node) {
if ($node->parent_id) {
printnode(getNode($node->parent_id));
}
echo $node->pagename;
return;
}

This is an oversimplification obviously but you get the idea. The page
needs to call printnode(getNode(PAGE ID)) to print it's path. getNode
is not shown here but it takes the ID as a parameter and returns an
object with the information returned from the database. You could also
store the relationship like this:

$pagedata = array(
1 => array('pagename',parid),
2 => array(...),
....
);

Hope I explained clearly enough and answered your question.

-Robert

crescent_au@yahoo.com wrote:

Rik · *nix forums Guru Wannabe Joined: 16 Nov 2005 Posts: 291

rlee0001 wrote:

Google