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1. imscissors
   Member
   Posted 1 year 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

2. Xephan
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   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);

3. imscissors
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   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

4. Xephan
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   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
   http://www.horde.org/horde/docs/?f=CODING_STANDARDS.html
   http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/coding-standard.overview.html

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