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A post archive

Here’s how a PHP template file for a WordPress archive looks like.

index.php

$context = Timber::context();

Timber::render('index.twig', $context);

For basic archives, that’s all you need. Behind the scenes, Timber already prepared a posts variable for you that holds all the posts that you would normally find in The Loop.

You can then loop over your posts with a for-loop in Twig. Here’s what your archive page could look like.

index.twig

{% extends "base.twig" %}

{% block content %}
    {% if posts is not empty %}
        <ul>
            {% for post in posts %}
                <li>{{ include('teaser.twig') }}</li>
            {% endfor %}
        <ul>
    {% endif %}

    {{ include('pagination.twig') }}
{% endblock %}

A post teaser #

Your teaser could look like this. We used the markup for an Inclusive Card as an example.

teaser.twig

<img
    src="{{ post.thumbnail.src('medium') }}"
    alt="{{ post.thumbnail.alt }}"
    width="{{ post.thumbnail.width }}"
    height="{{ post.thumbnail.height }}"
    loading="lazy"
>

<h2>
    <a
        href="{{ post.link }}"
        aria-describedby="desc-{{ post.slug }}"
    >{{ post.title }}</a>
</h2>

<p>{{ post.excerpt }}</p>

<span
    id="desc-{{ post.slug }}"
    aria-hidden="true"
>Read more</span>

<small>By {{ post.author }}</small>

There are two new things that you see here:

  • {{ post.slug }} – This property is the same as post.post_name, which is the version of a post’s title that is safe to use in URLs and will be used for permalinks.
  • {{ post.excerpt }} – This is an advanced function that pulls in the excerpt of a post, if it exists. Otherwise, it will generate an excerpt from your post’s content. Check out the documentation for Timber\Post::excerpt() to learn more about the parameters you can control the output with.

Using custom queries #

Sometimes you’ll want to use your own queries for archive pages or to display a list of posts in other places. For that, you can use Timber::get_posts(). Here’s an example for a more complex query, that selects posts that have certain movie genres and actor terms assigned. The parameters you use are the same as those for WP_Query.

$args = [
    'post_type' => 'post',
    'tax_query' => [
        'relation' => 'AND',
        [
            'taxonomy' => 'movie_genre',
            'field' => 'slug',
            'terms' => ['action', 'comedy'],
        ],
        [
            'taxonomy' => 'actor',
            'field' => 'id',
            'terms' => [103, 115, 206],
            'operator' => 'NOT IN',
        ],
    ],
];

$context['posts'] = Timber::get_posts($args);

You might want to show teasers for other posts from the same category at the bottom of a singular post. How would we do that?

First, you would prepare the data in your PHP template. For this, we add related_posts to $context.

single.php

$context = Timber::context();

$post = $context['post'];

$context['related_posts'] = Timber::get_posts([
    'post_type' => 'post',
    'posts_per_page' => 3,
    'no_found_rows' => true,
    'orderby' => 'date',
    'order' => 'DESC',
    'post__not_in' => [$post->ID],
    'category__in' => $post->terms([
        'taxonomy' => 'category',
        'fields' => 'ids',
    ]),
]);

Timber::render('single.twig', $context);

And then, in your singular view, you would loop over them. We can also reuse the teaser.twig view, that we introduced earlier.

single.twig

{% if related_posts is not empty %}
    <ul>
        {% for post in related_posts %}
            <li>{{ include('teaser.twig') }}</li>
        {% endfor %}
    </ul>
{% endif %}

You can read more about custom queries in the Posts Guide.