The Life of Lew Ayotte » php

Allowing Hyperlinks in Your WordPress Excerpts

Lew — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:30:11 +0000

By default, WordPress strips out all the HTML tags from your post excerpts. I needed to allow hyperlinks, but there is a problem when WordPress tries to truncate the post’s content. The wp_trim_excerpt function is what WordPress uses to do all the trimming work, I simply copied the code, modified it, and stuck my new version in the mu-plugins directory (or you could add it to your functions.php).

The first line I needed to change was the PHP function call strip_tags(). I need to set it to allow the tag… very simple to do:

Original Line:

$text = strip_tags($text);

New Line:

$text = strip_tags($text, '');

The second line I needed to change was where WordPress splits the excerpt up into separate words. This was a bit tricky because you run into an issue where you could be cutting of the , which could screw up your entire page. I decided the best thing to do would be to treat the entire hyperlink as a single word. So, My Website, would count as a single word. By default, WordPress creates a 55 word excerpt. That is pretty easy to change as well.

Original Line:

$words = preg_split('/[\n\r\t ]', $text, $excerpt_length + 1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY );

New Line:

$words = preg_split('/()|\n|\r|\t|\s/', $text, $excerpt_length + 1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY|PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE );

Next, you simple need to remove the current wp_trim_excerpt filter and add a new one that points to your new function. Here is what the entire block of code looks like for me:

', ']]>', $text);
		$text = strip_tags($text, '');
		$excerpt_length = apply_filters('excerpt_length', 55);

		$excerpt_more = apply_filters('excerpt_more', ' ' . '[...]');
		$words = preg_split('/()|\n|\r|\t|\s/', $text, $excerpt_length + 1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY|PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE );
		if ( count($words) > $excerpt_length ) {
			array_pop($words);
			$text = implode(' ', $words);
			$text = $text . $excerpt_more;
		} else {
			$text = implode(' ', $words);
		}
	}
	return apply_filters('new_wp_trim_excerpt', $text, $raw_excerpt);

}
remove_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'wp_trim_excerpt');
add_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'new_wp_trim_excerpt');

Regular Expression Explained

I changed /[\n\r\t\s ]/ to /()|\n|\r|\t|\s/ because I needed to capture everything in the HTML tags and count it as a single word. \n, \r, \t, \s are all pretty basic regex characters that preg_split() is using to break up the content. () is what captures everything in the tag. The .* means all “characters” adding the ? to .* makes it “non-greedy.” This for the case where there are multiple hyperlinks in the content. It prevents the regex from thinking link 1, link 2 is a single word. The parenthesis simply group the together, so it doesn’t try to split those items separately and then I needed to add PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE to preg_split, or preg_split would have just removed the link as garbage.

You should be able to use this as a pretty solid base for adding other HTML tags.

Embed an RSS/ATOM Feed into your WordPress Website

Lew — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:00:21 +0000

One of my clients needs to pull an RSS feed from a real estate virtual tour provider and display it on one of their pages. I looked into a few plugins and could not find one that was easily customizable. After a quick google search I discovered that WordPress has some built-in functions based off of SimplePie‘s easy to use RSS API.

I also needed to customize the output a little bit, which required me to rely on PHP’s preg_match and preg_replace functions. Here is some simple example for embedding a feed into your WordPess website:



get_items();
?>

	// Loop through each feed item and display each item as a hyperlink.
	

		get_title(); ?>

Check out the codex for more information about WordPress’ function feed_fetch()… and with a little extra coding you can format the feed any way you like, see our example at NC Capital Homes.

Easily Extended Contact Info in WordPress

Lew — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:50:54 +0000

I’m working on a project where I need the ability to add “Phone”, “Building”, and “Room” as information a user could add in their profile. I also wanted to remove “AIM”, “Yahoo”, and “Jabber” — none of the users are going to need to fill in that info.

You can easily add this code into your functions.php. I was writing it for a WordPress MU site with multiple themes and needed to make sure it was enforced, so I stuck it in the mu-plugins directory, in a file named “extended-contact-info.php”.

The Life of Lew Ayotte » php

Allowing Hyperlinks in Your WordPress Excerpts

Embed an RSS/ATOM Feed into your WordPress Website

Easily Extended Contact Info in WordPress

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