How to create a dynamic sitemap for a database-driven website
This tutorial demonstrates how to generate a dynamic sitemap for a ColdFusion database-driven website, assuming that you retrieve the content of your website from a database and you save the website content according to the concept of "Parent" and "Parent ID".
Let's say that you save your website content (through a content management system or a content publishing tool) in the following database table (name it "content" for example). Example:
| ID | PARENT_ID | TITLE | CONTENT | WEIGHT |
| 1 | 0 | Home | Content of this section... | 1 |
| 2 | 0 | Web Development | Content of this section... | 2 |
| 3 | 0 | Contact Us | Content of this section... | 3 |
| 4 | 2 | Macromedia ColdFusion MX | Content of this section... | 1 |
| 5 | 2 | CSS | Content of this section... | 3 |
| 6 | 2 | HTML/XHTML | Content of this section... | 2 |
| 7 | 4 | Tags | Content of this section... | 1 |
| 8 | 4 | Functions | Content of this section... | 2 |
| 9 | 0 | About Us | Content of this section... | 4 |
Now, our dynamic sitemap should look like this (assuming that we order the content by WEIGHT) :
- Home
- Web Development
- Macromedia ColdFusion MX
- Tags
- Functions
- HTML/XHTML
- CSS
- Macromedia ColdFusion MX
- Contact Us
- About Us
We will need to create two ColdFusion pages, "sitemap.cfm" and "getsitemap.cfm" as the following:
getsitemap.cfm
NOTE: setup your datasource name in your Application.cfm file. example: <cfset application.dsn="datasourcename">
PAGE: getsitemap.cfm
--->
<!--- this part runs when we call the getsitemap.cfm for the first time --->
<cfquery name="request.menuQuery" datasource="#application.dsn#">
SELECT ID, PARENT_ID, TITLE
FROM CONTENT
ORDER BY PARENT_ID, ID
</cfquery>
<cfset attributes.parentID="">
<cfelse>
<cfparam name="attributes.parentID" default="">
</cfif>
for the first call of getsitemap.cfm, the value of attributes.parentID will be 0 because we didn't pass any argument yet
and the query will retrieve the first level of the content, where PARENT_ID equal to 0 in other words,
the query will return the titles: Home, Macromedia ColdFusion MX, Contact Us, and About Us
--->
SELECT ID, PARENT_ID, TITLE
FROM request.menuQuery
WHERE
<cfif len(attributes.parentID) eq 0>
PARENT_ID = 0
<cfelse>
PARENT_ID=#attributes.parentID#
</cfif>
ORDER BY WEIGHT
</cfquery>
this part displays the titles retrieved by the query theMenuQuery and calls the same page "getsitemap.cfm" but this time we pass
the attribute/argument parentID, in fact the page is being called again for each title to see if it has sub titles and display them
--->
<ul type="square">
<cfoutput query="theMenuQuery">
<li><a href="viewcontent.cfm?id=#id#">#theMenuQuery.title#</a></li>
<cfmodule template="#getFileFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath())#" parentID="#theMenuQuery.ID#">
</cfoutput>
</ul>
</cfif>
sitemap.cfm
In this page, you just need to include the "getsitemap.cfm" as the following:
<cfinclude template="getsitemap.cfm">
This code helped me with alot of projects, I hope it helps you as well.
-
How to create a dynamic sitemap for a database-driven website
This tutorial demonstrates how to create a dynamic sitemap for a database-driven website with ColdFusion
Author: Ikramy Ghidan
Views: 16,213
Posted Date: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 -
Generate a unique number from current date and time
This is a function that generates a 14-digits unique number from the current date and time. You can use this number as a unique ID for your database records.
Author: Ikramy Ghidan
Views: 14,412
Posted Date: Tuesday, May 31, 2005
