Strange paginate_links behavior. First page link is always whatever page I’m on, all other links are correct

I’m using the following code to generate some pagination:

$wp_query = new WP_Query();
$wp_query->query('posts_per_page=5'.'&paged='.$paged);
$big = 999999999;
echo '<div class="pagination">';
echo paginate_links(array(  'base' => '%_%',
                            'format' => str_replace($big, '%#%', esc_url(get_pagenum_link( $big ))),
                            'current' => max( 1, get_query_var('paged') ),
                            'total' => $wp_query->max_num_pages,
                            'end_size' =>4,
                            'type' => 'list'));     
    echo '</div>';

Its generating my links correctly on the first page, but if I go to any other page everything is still correct except the link for page 1 is always the url of whatever page I am on. Seems like I’m missing somthing simple, anyone know a fix?

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

Short answer:

Try

'base' => str_replace( $big, '%#%', esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $big ) ) ),
'format' => '?paged=%#%',

Long answer:

I took a look at the paginate_links() source code (v3.5.1) and there is this line (#)

$link = str_replace('%_%', 1 == $n ? '' : $format, $base);

that is giving you the empty first page link.

With your setup you have $base = "%_%" and $format = "http://example.com/page/%#%/" so this becomes:

$link = str_replace('%_%', 1 == $n ? '' : "http://example.com/page/%#%/", "%_%");

where we have two cases:

n=1:     $link = str_replace('%_%', '', "%_%");

n>1:     $link = str_replace('%_%', "http://example.com/page/%#%/", "%_%");

and after the replacement:

n=1:     $link = '';

n>1:     $link = "http://example.com/page/%#%/";

Here is an example of the output from paginate_links():

<ul class='page-numbers'>
    <li><a class="prev page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/2/" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">&laquo; Previous</a></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href=''>1</a></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/2/'>2</a></li>
    <li><span class='page-numbers current'>3</span></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/4/'>4</a></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/5/'>5</a></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/6/'>6</a></li>
    <li><a class="next page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/4/" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">Next &raquo;</a></li>
</ul>

If you use instead (#):

'base' => str_replace( $big, '%#%', esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $big ) ) ),
'format' => '?paged=%#%',

then you get:

$link = str_replace('%_%', 1 == $n ? '' : "?paged=%#%", "http://example.com/page/%#%");

Since no replacement will take place

$link = "http://example.com/page/%#%";

in both cases (n=1 and n>1) and you have a non empty first page link with the output of paginate_links():

<ul class='page-numbers'>
    <li><a class="prev page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/2/" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">&laquo; Previous</a></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/1/'>1</a></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/2/'>2</a></li>
    <li><span class='page-numbers current'>3</span></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/4/'>4</a></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/5/'>5</a></li>
    <li><a class='page-numbers' href='http://example.com/page/6/'>6</a></li>
    <li><a class="next page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/4/" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">Next &raquo;</a></li>
</ul>

To have a non empty first page link it looks like $format can be any string as long as $base doesn’t include the string "%_%", i.e. these should work fine:

'format' => '?paged=%#%',
'format' => 'page/%#%',
'format' => 'asdfasdfasdfasdfasdf',

If you don’t use permalinks, then the example in (#) will also give you non empty first page link since

$link = str_replace('%_%', 1 == $n ? '' : "?paged=%#%", "http://example.com/?paged=%#%");

with replacements.

Method 2

Thanks birgire for help. I’m sharing the result of my paginate_links() which are working with custom taxonomy pages exactly as I need.

Hope this will help someone to fix it as quick as possible.

So here it is:

if (empty($pagerange)) {
    $pagerange = 2;
}
global $paged;
if (empty($paged)) {
    $paged = 1;
}
if ($numpages == '') {
    global $wp_query;
    $numpages = $wp_query->max_num_pages;
    if(!$numpages) {
        $numpages = 1;
    }
}        
    $pagination_args = array(
     'base'            => str_replace('%_%', 1 == $paged ? '' : "?page=%#%", "?page=%#%"),
     'format'          => '?page=%#%',
     'total'           => $numpages,
     'current'         => $paged,
     'show_all'        => False,
     'end_size'        => 1,
     'mid_size'        => $pagerange,
     'prev_next'       => True,
     'prev_text'       => __('<i class="fa fa-angle-left"></i>'),
     'next_text'       => __('<i class="fa fa-angle-right"></i>'),
     'type'            => 'list',
     'add_args'        => false,
     'add_fragment'    => ''
    );

$paginate_links = paginate_links($pagination_args);

if ($paginate_links) {
    echo "<nav class='custom-pagination'><ul>";
    echo $paginate_links;
    echo "</ul></nav>";
}

Method 3

I stumbled on a same problem and found out that I can replace:

'current' => max( 1, get_query_var('paged') ),

with:

'current' => max( 1, get_query_var('page') ),

So just renamed ‘paged’ >’page’ in query var and it works.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0