Blog Post Navigation using JavaScript | Part 1
Update 06/22/2020: Didn't realize that the JavaScript that I talked about in this post, was actually creating a Next link for this post. It thought this was a Journal Entry post, because it found that text in here. That's hilarious, but that is also part of the fun of tinkering. I have fixed it.
Update 04/26/2021: I have since taken down my Journal Entries, so the links on this post won't work anymore. However, the idea and logic described in this post, is still applicable for posts that uses index numbers for post slugs. For a working example of this, check out the posts on my photo-blog.
Finally got full blog post navigation working for my Journal Entries. If you have JavaScript enabled on your browser, you could effectively navigate from Journal Entry – I up to Journal Entry – XVI, then continue on to Journal Entry – 001, all the way up to the latest one (as of this writing), Journal Entry – 060. You can also navigate from Journal Entry – 060, all the way back down to Journal Entry – I.
Getting Post Slug and Index
To make navigation work between blog posts in a series, I made use of a standard format for post slugs/URLs. I call them “indexed” entries because I added an index to the end of the slug/URL. For example, “journal-entry-001”, “journal-entry-002”, “journal-entry-003” and so on. It's really just a way to help me figure out the sequence of posts.
So, first off, here is the JavaScript for getting the post slug from the URL. Then from there, getting the post index from the slug. Without this code, it will be impossible to automatically generate the links to the Previous and Next posts.
var element = document.querySelector('meta[property="og:url"]');
var content = element && element.getAttribute("content");
// Get post slug
var postSlug = content.split('/').pop();
var postIndex = postSlug.split('-').pop();
