Multi-dimensional options array (for themes/plugins) with Settings API

  • Luke

    (@lukejanicke)


    10 years, 10 months ago

    I just figured this out and I thought I’d share it.

    All the blog/forum posts on this topic are more than a year old. Either people have given up or I haven’t found the official post that explains how to do this. If there’s a more recent one out there, please share it with me.

    NOTE: A few posts says to use serialize() and unserialize(). You can but you don’t have to. There is an easier way. Read on.

    This is a generalized/simplified sample of how I store theme settings in a multidimensional array.

    First, populate with some defaults. This step is optional but it shows you how I have an array within an array.

    function set_default_theme_settings() {
	$meta = array (
		'date' => 1,
		'category' => 1,
		'author' => 1,
		'comments' => 1
	);
	$options = array (
		'copyright' => 'blah blah blah',
		'notfound' => 'yadda yadda yadda',
		'meta' => $meta // This is the array within an array.
	);
	add_option( 'blah', $options );
}
add_action( 'after_theme_setup', 'set_default_theme_settings' );

    blah is the name of my theme (not in real life) and here I use it as the name of the option. Of course, change blah to something unique for your theme/plugin. Probably the name of your own theme or plugin.

    I won’t post all the code.

    Cut a long story short, inside the form you pull out the options.

    $options = get_option('blah');

    Then you can use them like this:

    <input type="text" name="blah[copyright]" value="<?php echo $options['copyright']; ?>" />

    <input type="checkbox" id="meta_date" name="blah[meta][date]" value="1" <?php echo checked( 1, $options['meta']['date'], false ); ?> />

    Take careful note of where to use blah['…'] (for storing) and where to use $options['…'] (for retrieving).

    You can retrieve and store in the second array just by doubling up the square brackets…

    options['meta']['date']
    blah[meta][date]

    And I assume you can bury data in endless depths of embedded arrays:

    blah[program][department][section][project][methods][tools]…

    This is basic PHP syntax, but for me the key was realizing that I could use this PHP syntax in the HTML input name attribute for saving to the options multi-dimensional array using the WordPress Settings API. And WordPress would handle it all for me. Sweet!

    i.e. name="blah[meta][date]"

    That’s all folks! That’s all you need to do to retrieve and store settings in a multi-dimensional array in a single WordPress option.

    P.S. If this is already common knowledge, please point me in the direction of some good references. I figured it out by trial and error, intuition and blunder.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • You sir, are a life saver.

    You are right, that it’s a simple PHP array syntax to retrieve the data. The key for me here was that I could use that same PHP syntax as the name field and that would save back to the WP database for me. That saved me a huge amount of headache and work for how I figured I’d have to solve this problem…

    Thanks so much for posting this! If this information is elsewhere on the internet, I wasn’t able to find it.

    Thread Starter Luke

    (@lukejanicke)

    Great! Nice to know it helped someone.

    Thank you very much! This is what I’ve been searching for two hours. I’m new to multi-dimensional array and this really has helped me a lot.

    I want to add something.If you want to save multi-dimensional array from select element, you can do it like this:

    <select id="select_element" name="blah[meta][]" >
<option></option>
<option></option>
</select>

    Note the empty square bracket [] after first array bracket.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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