I might be biased, but I really enjoy using my Display Posts Shortcode plugin. It makes it easy to query posts without any code. It provides clients the ability to dynamically list whatever content they’d like without having me build custom templates. It’s also incredibly powerful – almost all of the WP_Query arguments are available. See for yourself.
But this power leads to an obvious issue – complicated queries require complicated shortcodes. I’m working on a website right now that has a ‘products’ post type and two taxonomies: ‘product-industry’ and ‘product-category’. On industry pages, they want to display products that are in that industry. Seems simple enough, but you end up with a shortcode like this:
[display-posts post_type="products" taxonomy="product-industry" tax_term="agriculture"]
Which makes sense to a developer, but is easy for a non-technical person to type wrong. Lots of hypens, underscores… Am I supposed to use industry, product_industry, product-industry…
Even more difficult is displaying the intersection of two taxonomies. Let’s say we want all the products in the ‘agriculture’ industry and ‘electronics’ category. Here’s the shortcode you’d need:
[display-posts post_type="products" taxonomy="product-industry" tax_term="agriculture" taxonomy_2="product-category" tax_2_term="electronics" tax_relation="AND"]
Creating Shortcut Arguments
You can place whatever parameters you’d like in the shortcode. You can then write a function that filters the Display Posts query arguments and leverages those custom parameters. Just be careful when modifying the arguments so that you don’t accidentally affect other uses of the shortcode throughout your site.
In this case, I’m adding two parameters: industry and product_cat. If either of those are provided, I set up the taxonomy query and set the post type to ‘products’. Here’s the code.
| <?php | |
| /** | |
| * Industry and Product Category parameters on Display Posts Shortcode | |
| * @author Bill Erickson | |
| * @link http://www.billerickson.net/shortcut-args-for-display-posts-shortcode | |
| * | |
| * @param array $args, WP Query arguments | |
| * @param array $atts, shortcode arguments | |
| * @return array $args | |
| */ | |
| function be_dps_industry_and_category( $args, $atts ) { | |
| // If neither of my custom parameters are in use, return the $args (no modifications necessary) | |
| if( ! ( isset( $atts['industry'] ) || isset( $atts['product_cat'] ) ) ) | |
| return $args; | |
| // Set up a tax query, using the existing tax query if there is one | |
| $tax_query = isset( $args['tax_query'] ) ? $args['tax_query'] : array(); | |
| // If they specified an industry, include that in the tax query | |
| if( isset( $atts['industry'] ) ) { | |
| $tax_query[] = array( | |
| 'taxonomy' => 'product-industry', | |
| 'field' => 'slug', | |
| 'terms' => explode( ', ', $atts['industry'] ), | |
| ); | |
| } | |
| // If they specified a product category, include that in the tax query | |
| if( isset( $atts['product_cat'] ) ) { | |
| $tax_query[] = array( | |
| 'taxonomy' => 'product-category', | |
| 'field' => 'slug', | |
| 'terms' => explode( ', ', $atts['product_cat'] ), | |
| ); | |
| } | |
| // For Multiple tax queries, ensure results match both queries | |
| if( 1 < count( $tax_query ) && !isset( $tax_query['relation'] ) ) | |
| $tax_query['relation'] = 'AND'; | |
| $args['tax_query'] = $tax_query; | |
| // Set the post type to 'products' | |
| $args['post_type'] = 'products'; | |
| return $args; | |
| } | |
| add_filter( 'display_posts_shortcode_args', 'be_dps_industry_and_category', 10, 2 ); |
First I check to see if my parameters are in use. If they aren’t return the arguments before any modifications are made. Then I check to see if there’s already a taxonomy query, so that I don’t overwrite that one. Then I look at each parameter, and if it’s present I set up a tax query. If there’s multiple tax queries, I set the ‘tax_relation’ to AND so that it will find posts matching both (set to OR if you want to match one or the other). Finally, I overwrite the shortcode’s tax_query with our new one and set the post type to ‘products’.
The first shortcode above can now be rewritten like this:
[display-posts industry="agriculture"]
And the second shortcode like this:
[display-posts industry="agriculture" product_cat="electronics"]
For more examples of customizing this plugin, see my Display Posts Shortcode code snippets.
Laura says
Ack, sorry! Looking through the docs, now I see I need to add more arguments to the short code, like image_size=”thumbnail” to get the pictures to show up.
Lad says
Hi,
I have used https://www.billerickson.net/code/featured-posts-display-posts-shortcode/
Also, I have created the custom post field name be_featured checkbox using Toolset plugin.
When i added the option is_featured=”1″ in the shortcode it displays blank.
Please let me know the proper solution to it.
Bill Erickson says
You’ll need to check what value is actually being saved to the
be_featuredmeta key. When editing a post you’ve marked featured, click “Screen Options” in the top right corner and make sure “Custom Fields” is checked. Then scroll down to the Custom Fields metabox.Look for the
be_featuredkey and note the value that’s saved. You’ll want to update the code you linked to above to match that value.For instance, if your plugin is setting the
be_featuredfield toon, update the code to this: https://gist.github.com/billerickson/44db3a4a1a1fe1c52e32ee2752c06d77