Display (this) Based on Multiple Cat IDs from User Input (widget options)

  • Resolved imscissors

    (@imscissors)


    14 years, 5 months ago

    Hi,

    I’ve been searching high and low for how to do this for hours to no avail.

    I’m coding a plugin where my goal is to allow someone to place “whatever” on single posts based on category id’s that they specify.

    Scenario
    ————
    Place Google Adsense on post of these categories:

    In the widget options I provide a field to define category id’s (comma separated):

    <!-- Multiple Category ID's -->
      <p>     

        <?php echo '<label for="' . $this->get_field_name('gaw_placebymcat') . '">' . __(' Multiple Categories by ID:') . '
        <input style="width:25%;" id="' . $this->get_field_id('gaw_placebymcat') . '" name="' . $this->get_field_name('gaw_placebymcat') . '"
        type="text" value="' . $gaw_placebymcat . '" /></label>'; ?>

      </p>

    So lets say their input is 6,11,17 – the person would want the widget (adsense ads) to display on all post in the categories 6,11, and 17.

    So I got the conditional tag in_category to correct return true or false based on the current posts categories by hard-coding the array as normal:

    if (in_category( array( '6', '11', '17' ) ) ) { echo 'display ads her because this is cat 6, 11 or 17';} else {echo 'we wont display because condition is false';}

    So I confirmed this as working. So it looks like I need an array like in the code above. So I looked how to create an array from a comma separated string and came up with this:

    $multicats = $gaw_placebymcat;
//the variable is user defined cats sep'd by commas

// split to array
$multicatarray = explode(', ', $multicats);
print_r($multicatarray);

    The result:

    Array ( [0] => 6,11,17 )

    But I don’t think this what I want, and I have know idea how to incorporate that into the in_category condition. Again, I’m pretty new to PHP and a bit of a hack I guess that’s how you learn ??

    Anyway, I’m so hard-headed I worked on this for 8 hours before asking here.

    Hope one of you can point in the right direction. Maybe I’m totally turned around here.

    So please, please help me!

    Thanks a bunch,
    Bryan

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Your explode() parameter is wrong, there’s an extra space after the comma. So you end up with an array with only 1 value which is “6,11,17”. The correct usage in your case should be
    $multicatarray=explode(',',$multicats);

    This will work regardless of whether your user inputs 6,11,17 or 6, 11, 17 or a mix of commas with or without spacing.

    After that, your in_category check should work.

    As a side note, I’ll suggest you name your variables in full words and with camel capitalization or underscore separations. It will make it easier to figure out what you were doing a few months down the road. e.g.

    $multiCategoriesArray = explode(',', $multiCategories);

    Thread Starter imscissors

    (@imscissors)

    Xephan,

    Nice! That did it… For anyone’s future reference, here’s the code:

    $multiCategories= $gaw_placebymcat;
// move into usable array
$multiCategoriesArray=explode(',',$multiCategories);

    Then the condition:

    //if this field has an input...
if ($gaw_placebymcat != '') {
  //if the current cat matches one of the user input cat id's...
  if (in_category( $multiCategoriesArray) ) {
  // execute this...
  include ('the-widget-code.php'); }
}

    Btw, thanks for the tips about for capitalization. Do you have a resource handy as sort of a guide to “clean coding”… Would love to have that.

    Thanks again bro,

    Bryan

    I don’t have a single resource handy for clean coding, mine is a result of working with various languages over the past decades. The primary underlying principle is “Is my code easy for somebody to understand and debug a year down the road when even I might not remember why I did what I did the way I did”

    <Wall of Text Warning>
    In general,

    1. Leave comments explaining things that you had to spend time researching/testing to figure out.

    2. Name variables/functions in full so the situation won’t arise when you meant “Cats” the animal (say while doing a plugin for a pet website) and get it confused with “Cats” for categories. Or wonder what is $gaw_placebymcat? ??

    3. Proper indentations

    4. Do not mix code and html even though PHP allows it. It’s messy, I know WordPress does it, but that’s probably due to the origins of the project. Just see in the past week here how many people got confused about adding <?php ?> when they shouldn’t. ??

    5. Be consistent, don’t mix/switch styles midway, e.g. $gaw_placebymcat

    To get a more detailed grasp, you can refer to a coding conventions like these
    https://www.horde.org/horde/docs/?f=CODING_STANDARDS.html
    https://framework.zend.com/manual/en/coding-standard.overview.html

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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