Soliloquy and custom slideshows

1. That’s really more out of the scope of Soliloquy. You would be trying to make it do things that it is not supposed to do, which leads to inefficiencies and other things (such as I cannot guarantee it to work at all :-P). I might build a gallery type plugin in the future, but as for now, no, Soliloquy does not do that.

2. It sounds like you need Soliloquy + Dynamic Addon. The Dynamic Addon allows you to set some master settings and then build sliders on the fly (and can even override master settings if needed). You can learn more about that here: https://soliloquywp.com/dynamic/

Well – ok you CAN make it a gallery. I have customized it to do so via the Ligthbox Addon. You can see an example here: https://www.csspecialevents.com/gallery/the-dairy-barn/

But it does require a good amount of customization work. If you are interested in that, I can make some docs on how I got it to that point if you like that solution.

Wow..thanks for such a fast reply Thomas!
Regarding the first point, I guess all I really need is a list of the images uploaded to a specific gallery in the post’s php template. Then I can do the rest by loading them into a custom slideshow format.

I understand your point about its scope, and generally I would use it at places within its features, but in this case, I needed a more direct access, if possible.

Thanks very much!
Kunal

Again thanks!
Looking at the html code, looks like you are loading the images into a list. So if I can get the list in a raw format so I can format it into the custom gallery, that would work fine for me!

I am good enough with php and wordpress templates, so no issues with handling the customization!

Thanks!

When you say in raw format, you just mean images in an array type of format? No HTML at all?

Yes – just raw format (basically all images content in an array). I can loop through that array and construct a format that my slideshow plugin can read…

thanks!

Here you go. This is the code that would go in your functions.php file of the theme:

add_filter( 'tgmsp_pre_load_slider', 'tgm_soliloquy_transform_to_gallery', 10, 5 );
/**
 * Circumvents the slider output and allows access to raw format.
 *
 * @param bool $bool Boolen if the filter should be run. Default is false.
 * @param int $id The slider ID being filtered.
 * @param array $images Array of images in the slider.
 * @param array $data Array of meta for the slider.
 * @param int $count The current number of the slider on page (if there is more than one on the page).
 * @return bool|string False if you want to keep a slider, HTML output for something else.
 */
function tgm_soliloquy_transform_to_gallery( $bool, $id, $images, $data, $count ) {

	// Prepare your $gallery variable. All gallery HTML will be stored in here.
	$gallery = '';

	// Make all HTML stuff happen here.

	// Return the $gallery variable to be output by Soliloquy.
	return $gallery;

}

The $bool parameter is false by default. If you leave it false, the slider will still be output as a slider. But if it returns anything other than false (such as a string of HTML), it will return that instead.

So just build your gallery HTML into the $gallery variable (or use output buffering if you like that way) and have fun. ??

I also should note that this filter is only available in full in the paid version of the plugin. It is available in Lite for compat, but it does not fully remove all slider-based items (such as scripts and styles) like it does in the paid version.

OK great!
Now regarding the dynamic option, is there a place I see demo this feature in admin? Its not clear how it handles the different slideshows created in the admin. It be very helpful to check it beore purchasing it!

Thanks!

The more I think about, since you need the interface, you don’t need the Dynamic option. Dynamic is for generating sliders on the fly from custom sets of images, such as ones attached to a post. There is no interface with that, just shortcodes and template tags to output the slider.

I’m not sure how to approach having default slider meta just yet. You could just hide the slider styles box with CSS and then filter the settings in before the slider is output.

There is a filter called tgmsp_slider_settings that you could use to modify the output of the slider settings before they are saved to the db. You would reference like this:

add_filter( 'tgmsp_slider_settings', 'tgm_soliloquy_set_default_settings' );
function tgm_soliloquy_set_default_settings( $settings ) {
        // Modify the settings here, e.g.:
        $settings['animation'] = 'slide-horizontal';

        // Return amended settings.
        return $settings;
}

You can just print_r the settings to see what is available to modify. This filter is fired on the save_post hook. Hope this helps!

Thanks Thomas!
I’ll try this out and let you know it works out tonight…again thanks for your amazing support!

No problem!

Thomas, can you explain exactly how to use the tgm_soliloquy_transform_to_gallery function to print out the images in a raw format. Is this possible with the free version? Thanks!