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Tied Entries is a plugin that enables unlimited traversal across the galaxy a site's various channels via their Playa and/or relationship fields.

You’re my only hope

EE’s related_entries and reverse_related_entries tags cannot be nested, nor can Playa’s equivalent children and parents tags, so only an entry’s related or reverse related entries are accessible; those related in turn to its related entries are not. The Tied Entries plugin overcomes this limitation, enabling unlimited traversal across a site’s various channels via their Playa and relationship fields.

Bind your galaxy together

How does it work? One of the plugin’s parameters is the “tie”, where you string together either field names (for related entries) preceded by “>” and/or channel names (for reverse related entries) preceded by “<”. So a tie might appear as follows: “>a_field<a_channel<another_channel:a_first_field|a_force_field”. This way you can confidently weave your site’s content together much more extensively. And the Force will be with you; almost all the standard channel:entries tag parameters remain available.

Hyperdrive motivator

While there have been other methods for the undeterred EE developer to tie together a series of related entries in templates, either with long MySQL queries or a series of embedded templates, the Tied Entries plugin is much easier than both and consumes fewer resources than the latter: even a tie spanning the whole Empire is still only a single SQL query.

TIE fighter

If Playa’s not installed, the plugin can be a useful substitute for the standard related_entries and reverse_related tags when displaying entries just one relationship away. Why? Because, unlike those tags, results can be filtered by categories and custom fields.

That’s no moon

There’s also a rich and extensive debug option to help you figure things out if the plugin isn’t producing the results you expect.

I can imagine quite a bit

The Tied Entries plugin costs $20 per EE install, comes in two versions, one for EE v1.x and one for v2.x, and you can buy it right here on Devot-ee.

Alternatively, you can download it freely at Engaging.net (requires registration) to try before you buy. After all, it’s quite possible this asteroid is not entirely stable.

Tied Entries Links

• Product Page
• Docs
• EE Forums thread

This entry was last updated January 17, 2012, 11:59 am.

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