Dropdown Category Selection for Publishing Posts in P2 theme v.1.1.3

that will no doubt not work Thet, the code is significantly different in v1.1+

a hack for drop down category selection would need changes in 4 files, assuming your using categories other than the 4 (status update, blogpost, quote etc) provided with v1.1+

the files are p2.js, functions.php, post-form.php and ajax.php

I might provide a solution in februari when I have more time but if anyone before me has already cracked it, I hope they share it here.

I’ll see what I can do

Here goes:

in p2.js go to line 217 which should show:

var args = {action: 'new_post', _ajax_post:nonce, posttext: posttext, tags: tags, post_cat: post_cat, post_title: post_title, post_citation: post_citation };

replace this with:

var drop_cat = $('#drop_cat').val();
var args = {action: 'new_post', _ajax_post:nonce, posttext: posttext, tags: tags, post_cat: post_cat, drop_cat: drop_cat, post_title: post_title, post_citation: post_citation };

in ajax.php, find around line 155:

$accepted_post_cats = apply_filters( 'p2_accepted_post_cats', array( 'post', 'quote', 'status', 'link' ) );
		$post_cat = ( in_array( $_POST['post_cat'], $accepted_post_cats ) ) ? $_POST['post_cat'] : 'post';

make a backup, or comment these lines out and replace with:

$drop_cat= $_POST['drop_cat'];
$post_cat = $_POST['post_cat'];
if ($drop_cat) { $post_cat = $drop_cat;} //if a category was selected from the drop down menu, this will become the category.

then we need to add the actual dropdown menu, in post-form.php add this before line 78 (before the form closes)

<select name="drop_cat" id="drop_cat">
 <option value=""><?php echo attribute_escape(__('Select Category')); ?></option>
 <?php
  $categories=  get_categories();
  foreach ($categories as $cat) {
  	$option = '<option value="'.$cat->category_nicename.'">';
	$option .= $cat->cat_name;
	$option .= ' ('.$cat->category_count.')';
	$option .= '</option>';
	echo $option;
  }
 ?>
</select>

In case you want to exclude categories you can control what categories are displayed by passing parameters to get_categories()

If you need to force a category choice from the drop down box:

add this to post-forms.php:

<label class="cat-error" for="dropcat" id="dropcat_error"></label>

I put it directly after the drop down selection.
note that the class ‘cat-error’ defines the display through css for the warning message.

in p2.js you’ll need to rearrange one line we added before:

$drop_cat= $_POST['drop_cat'];

and place it earlier inside the function, with a few new lines. Find the line that states:

if(jQuery('.no-posts')) jQuery('.no-posts').hide();

and add this straight after that line:

var drop_cat = $('#drop_cat').val(); // assigns the drop category value

		if ("" == drop_cat) { // checks the drop category value, if empty, will pass a message
			$("label#dropcat_error").text('Please select a category').show().focus();
			return false;
		}

This should work but keep in mind this kind of defeats the purpose of the post types/tab functionality p2 uses.

Hi Nobble, thank you very much for this solution, this helps me a lot!

worked like a gem, thanks a ton to Nobble. Cheers man!

@nobble

Hi Nobble, seems like you’re the person to ask about this. I want exactly what acrofilo has achieved here.
I followed your instructions carefully but when loading my blog I got an error in a line of the functions.php, stopping the blog from loading. I couldn’t log in so had to reinstall the theme.

– I’m using the P2 version 1.1.5
– I didn’t make any changes to the functions.php because I just followed your instructions, I guess I should make changes but have no idea how?

Any help greatly appreciated.