h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's fairly simple, really, so why do you constantly link to the wrong page for QoTD?

TRiG.

Sorry TRiG, my knowledge of code is infinitesimal. All we want to do is link to a specific post, so if we want to link to post 25, we add '#pi25'? Is today's link wrong because we've got the 'latest' in it? For us dummies here, what should the full URL be to link to that post? I know we've been through this before so I do appreciate your patience.

A23908205 should answer all your questions.

Specifically, this bit: "To show the last page of a conversation, add &latest=1 to the end of the URL. This doesn't show the last twenty posts. Rather, it shows the last page, given that there are twenty posts to a page. Note that this form of link is unstable: as the conversation moves on, different pages will be called up by the latest=1 command."

Or just have a chat with Jim Lynn.

TRiG.

But we don't necessarily want to point to the last page; we want to point to the specific post. As advised, I'll ask Jim Lynn.

Bravo for today!

TRiG.

Aw, Bless him. He is a little trier

*grabs a random line of code from the 3N Milestones page, edits out things not needed for this discussion*

A completely ridiculous number of posts!

The really really relevant part being the "skip=(all the posts before the one you want to link to)&show=(however many you want to show--when I took over the page I snagged this from, I started just using 1 instead of 20)" part

Argh! When I copied this over, I thought I'd missed the last part, and now I see I didn't miss it... And I previewed, too Anyway, let's try that again...

A completely ridiculous number of posts!

Same notes after;)

The trouble with using "skip" is that you end up with (for example) a group of postings from number 4 to number 23. Then if you click the "previous page" button, it gets confused.

You want something that shows you 20 postings, with the last one being a multiple of 20, and the browser scrolled so that the one we are interested in appears at the top of the window. Trig knows how to do this but I don't think anybody else does.

Oh, OK.

> "All we want to do is link to a specific post"

Eg: F47997?thread=5739127&post=66984877#p66984877

where "&" has to be written as "& amp ;" (without the spaces or quotes) for HTML pages. That link contains the (optional) forum number, thread number and unique post number (as both a jump-to instruction and a position-at instruction).

No need to know the number of posts to skip for pages if you use the unique post number rather than the post index number within the thread. The unique post number can be found lurking in the reply link for that post.

Yup, there's all sorts of ways to do it (most of them explained in my Guide Entry linked to above). Personally, I prefer the skip and show buttons, because they give you some idea of where in the conversation you're going to land. And it's not too hard to make 'skip' be a multiple of 20.

TRiG.

But with skip and show where skip is a multiple, you can't make the view land on a particular post. It'll always land on the first post of the 20, so the reader will have no idea which one they're supposed to be reading. That method given above by Front Page Archiver seems to be the best.

So, as Derek says, you add #pi[local post number] or #p[absolute post number] to the end of the URL. The local post number is the number in that conversation, while the absolute post number is unique across the entire dna system.

TRiG.

You've got "latest=1" in it again.

TRiG.

OK cheers TRiG, that's fixed now.

Today's QotD link should be F19585?thread=5900333&skip=20#pi35.

TRiG.

Thanks TRiG!

Will this help you in future?

http://h2g2aviators.com/test/find_post.php

TRiG.



<?php

if (($thread) and ($post)) {
$skip = floor(($post - 1) / 20) * 20;
}

?>

Can I push a button?