Get entries NOT related to categories

Question

is it possible to grab all the entries in a section that arent related to a category?

So something like

craft.entries.section('news').relatedTo('not',category)

Doesnt seem to work but is there some other syntax?

Answer 1

If you want to do it in a single query, Marion's answer is probably the best.

Otherwise, you could do something like this:

{% set idsHavingCategory = craft.entries.section('news').relatedTo(category).limit(null).ids() %}

{% set omitIds = 'and, not ' ~ idsHavingCategory|join(', not ') %}

{% set entries = craft.entries.section('news').id(omitIds) %}

Inspired by this article, which shows how to (1) grab ids, and (2) query against them:

http://webstoemp.com/blog/manipulating-craft-elementcriteriamodel-with-twig/

Also references related solutions found in these answers:

• https://craftcms.stackexchange.com/a/4930/45
• https://craftcms.stackexchange.com/a/4573/45

Answer 2

I got this to work with search:

{% set uncategorizedEntries
  = craft.entries.section('news').search('-category:*') %}

Here category is the category field. You are searching everything in news which does not have a category field that matches *.

Answer 3

Another approach -- that might work for you -- is to filter on the output, rather than the query. For instance, using this query:

{% set entries = craft.entries.section('news') %}

Output using this loop:

{% for entry in entries if entry.category is empty %}
    ...
{% endfor %}

YMMV

Answer 4

Not sure if this will help much, but I did something similar with:

{% set allNews = craft.entries.section('news') %)

Then:

{% for entry in allNews.id("not #{category.id}") ... {% endfor %}

Hope that helps in some way.