Category: Tutorials

Mangling strings for fun and profit

On By westiIn Development, Tutorials, WordPress15 Comments

As a WordPress lead developer, every time I see someone recommending editing a core WordPress file, a little bit of me dies.

You should always avoid editing the core files and put your modifications into a plugin so as to ensure you have a smooth upgrade experience to a future WordPress version.

Therefore inspired by the following forum post here is how to change one of the translatable strings in WordPress without hacking a core file using the filters available in the translation functions:

<?php
/*
 Plugin Name: PJW Translation Mangler
 Plugin URI: http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/#
 Description: Example of how to mangle translated strings.
 Author: Peter Westwood
 Version: 0.01
 Author URI: http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/
 */

class PJW_Translation_Mangler {
 /**
 * Filter the translation string before it is displayed.
 *
 * @param $translation The current translation
 * @param $text The text being translated
 * @param $context The context for the translation
 * @param $domain The domain for the translation
 * @return string The translated / filtered text.
 */
 function filter_gettext($translation, $text, $domain) {
  $translations = &get_translations_for_domain( $domain );
  if ( $text == 'View all posts filed under %s' ) {
   return $translations->translate( 'See all articles filed under %s' );
  }
  return $translation;
 }
}
add_filter('gettext', array('PJW_Translation_Mangler', 'filter_gettext'), 10, 4);
?>

The filter used in this example gettext is one of a set of filters in the translation functions in wp-includes/l10n.php which also include gettext_with_context, ngettext, and ngettext_with_context.

Feeding on feedback and progress

On By westiIn Development, Tutorials, WordPress2 Comments

Keeping track of a projects progress is a common desire and if the project you are interested in happens to be a WordPress plugin then there are a number of RSS feeds which are an important resource for you (replace plugin_slug with the plugins slug!).

http://wordpress.org/support/rss/tags/plugin_slug
http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/plugin_slug?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss

The first of these contains all the support forum posts relevant to a particular plugin and the second is all the code changes that are happening in the plugins repository.

To keep track of these you have a couple of choices.

Firstly you could subscribe to them in your feed reader or if like me you like to receive emails for this sort of thing you can setup a cool tool called rss2email on your pc/server to email you new posts/changes.

Adding extra user meta fields

On By westiIn Development, Tutorials, WordPress22 Comments

Last night there was a discussion as to what could be achieved today as part of a “WordHack” session at WordCamp UK and SimonD tweeted that he would like to be able to add extra user meta fields to the back end user profile page easily.

I tweeted back that it was already easy and so here is the proof of concept code which shows you:

  • How to add a user meta field to the page
  • How to process the new value when it is updated.

These can the been displayed on the front-end using the standard template tags get_the_author_meta() and the_author_meta()


<?php
/*
Plugin Name: PJW User Meta
Plugin URI: http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/archives/2009/07/19/adding-extra-user-meta-fields
Description: Allows users to configure some random extra meta value.
Author: Peter Westwood
Version: 0.02
Author URI: http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/

Use of the frontend as get_the_author_meta('something') or the_author_meta('something')
*/

class pjw_user_meta {

 function pjw_user_meta() {
 if ( is_admin() )
 {
 add_action('show_user_profile', array(&$this,'action_show_user_profile'));
 add_action('edit_user_profile', array(&$this,'action_show_user_profile'));
 add_action('personal_options_update', array(&$this,'action_process_option_update'));
 add_action('edit_user_profile_update', array(&$this,'action_process_option_update'));
 }

 }

 function action_show_user_profile($user)
 {
 ?>
 <h3><?php _e('Other Contact Info') ?></h3>

 <table>
 <tr>
 <th><label for="something"><?php _e('Something else'); ?></label></th>
 <td><input type="text" name="something" id="something" value="<?php echo esc_attr(get_the_author_meta('something', $user->ID) ); ?>" /></td>
 </tr>
 </table>
 <?php
 }

 function action_process_option_update($user_id)
 {
 update_usermeta($user_id, 'something', ( isset($_POST['something']) ? $_POST['something'] : '' ) );
 }
}
/* Initialise outselves */
add_action('plugins_loaded', create_function('','global $pjw_user_meta_instance; $pjw_user_meta_instance = new pjw_user_meta();'));
?>

Enjoy!

Updated to correctly use the $user/$user_id passed to the actions rather than the global $user_id

Searching for Children and Grandchildren

On By westiIn Development, Tutorials, WordPress2 Comments

I had a request recently for help on using my Query Child Of plugin to create a page template to show the grandchildren of a page as well as a number of people asking for better examples on how to use my plugin in general to just list the children of a page.

I am now happy to announce that I can provide these examples and have updated the plugin documentation on in the WordPress plugin directory to match as well.

Continue reading “Searching for Children and Grandchildren” →