Joomla Tags As Custom Filters

: 18 Oct 2022

Showcasing the power of Joomla 4 out of the box with no additional extensions I produced this website (https://brianstest.site). One of the features I created was a masonry style view (https://brianstest.site/trips) with no javascript or css edits - just some simple template overrides.

The tutorial below is for creating a simpler version of that view using tags instead of custom fields. A custom fields version will follow.

Setup

Create a single category called Holiday
Create the tags you need to filter the content eg Beach, Nature, City, Historic
Create multiple articles in the Holiday category
- Add Tags to each article
- Add Readmore to each article
Create a menu item of type Articles->Category Blog
- Set the Blog Layout as follows
  - 0 Leading Articles
  - 9 Intro Articles
  - 3 Columns
  - Multi Column Direction - Across
- Set the Options as follows
  - Intro Text - Show
  - Category - Hide
  - Author - Hide
  - Create Date (etc) - Hide
  - Tags - Show
Edit the Holiday category and add all the tags

Template Override 1

Create overrides for Layouts->joomla->content
Create a new file called filters.php in the folder /templates/template_name/html/layouts/joomla/content

Paste the code below into that file and save

<?php

defined('_JEXEC') or die;

?>
<?php if (!empty($displayData)) : ?>
    <?php foreach ($displayData as $i => $tag) : ?>
        <input type="checkbox" class="btn-check" name="CheckBox" id="<?php echo $tag->alias; ?>" value="<?php echo $tag->alias; ?>">
        <label class="btn btn-outline-primary btn-sm" for="<?php echo $tag->alias; ?>"><?php echo $tag->title; ?></label>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Template Override 2

Create overrides for Components->com_content->category
Open the override for /templates/template_name/html/com_content/category/blog.php

Insert the code below before line 36

$tags = $this->category->tags->itemTags;
$filter = implode(
    ',',
    array_map(
       fn(object $tag): string => '[value="' . $tag->alias . '"]:checked ~ .blog-items .blog-item:not([data-category~="' . $tag->alias . '"])',
       ($this->category?->tags?->itemTags ?? []) ?: []
    )
 );
/** @var Joomla\CMS\WebAsset\WebAssetManager $wa */
$wa = Factory::getApplication()->getDocument()->getWebAssetManager();
$wa->addInlineStyle($filter . '{display: none; opacity: none;}');

On new line 63 replace joomla.content.tags with joomla.content.filters

Around line 105 delete the highlighted code below
Save & Close the file.

Template Override 3

Open the override for /templates/template_name/html/com_content/category/blog_item.php

Before line 35 insert the following code

<div class="com-content-category-blog__item blog-item"
    itemprop="blogPost" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/BlogPosting"
        data-category="
            <?php if ($params->get('show_tags', 1) && !empty($this->item->tags->itemTags)) : ?>
                <?php foreach ($this->item->tags->itemTags as $tag) { echo $tag->alias . ' '; }; ?>
            <?php endif; ?>
        ">