Impressed about WordPress

Ezra — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 18:42:21 +0000

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of developing for the WordPress platform at my new work. Before I’ve done very little with WordPress, but I have to say I’m impressed with the latest version.

There are several nice features I’ve been introduced to like menu’s and feature images.

But one of the best functions I found is wp_enqueue_script and wp_enqueue_style. The best thing about these functions are that they have the ability to solve dependencies. Simply tell the system you need jquery and voila, it will be included.

Sadly I also noticed that some theme’s and plugins are not using this system yet, causing some scripts to be included twice. So all theme and plugin author’s please use these functions to include styles and scripts!

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_enqueue_script
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_enqueue_style

My new favorite function: map

Ezra — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 03:46:55 +0000

Map, that’s my new favorite pure function. It’s very simple in use and has tons of uses! Ever been fidgeting with numbers trying to get the right output? Save your time the next time and use Map!

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function map($v, $a, $b, $x = 0, $y = 1)
{
return ($v == $a) ? $x : ($v - $a) * ($y - $x) / ($b - $a) + $x;
}

As you can see it’s very easy in use. The first parameter is the value that needs to be mapped, the next two values are respectfully the minimum and maximum value of the input and the last two are respectfully the min and max of the output.

So lets take an example: It’s 20 degrees Celsius outside, but we want to map it to Fahrenheit.

1	map($_GET['c'], -40, 200, -40, 392);

And that’s it!, we know that -40 degrees Celsius is -40 degrees Fahrenheit and that 200 degrees Celsius is 392 degrees Fahrenheit, and this way the value of c gets mapped from Celsius to Fahrenheit, that simple! No more fidgeting with formulae.

Also because it’s a pure function it’s easily memoized, this will make the already fast function even faster by caching the inputs and the outputs. But because I don’t know an easy way of Memoizing functions in PHP except for explicitly making the function memoized, i’ll leave it with a link to Wikipedia.

OpenSearch WordPress Plugin

Ezra — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:01:47 +0000

I’ve been searching for a plugin for WordPress that makes an OpenSearch file.

Found nothing so i’ve been working on it myself, however lately I’ve seen another OpenSearch plugin appear in the plugins database.

The plugin system of wordpress is ok, but could be a lot better, namely a class system. The way it works now is there are a lot of events that you can register functions to, that will fire when the event happens. You can also create some filters that will for example pass the text that has been written in a new post to alter some text like tags added to the post.

It would have been very nice if the plugin system would have worked with a class system, by simply creating a class to expand on the features.

But enough talk about the plugin system, let me tell you some about the plugin. It’s my first plugin so I’m still experimenting with the API. The way it works now is it creates a OpenSearch.xml file when the plugin activates and the file is basically static with some variable values that make the file specific for your blog.

As I said before, now someone else started working on the plugin so mine has become useless as the other one is superior to mine. So without further ado, the code that I had for anyone to download if they please.

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/**
Edits:
Ezra 18-08-08 Eerste versie
Ezra 19-08-08 Hij werkt, gzip ook!
Ezra 28-08-08 Bij Deactivaten wordt het bestand verwijderd. Encoding veranderd naar US-ASCII.

*/

/*
Plugin Name: OpenSearch
Plugin URI: http://codedump.tsdme.nl
Description: Add a OpenSearch description to your blog
Version: 0.1
Author: Ezra (Ezra@tsdme.nl)
Author URI: http://codedump.tsdme.nl/Admin
*/

//Definitions
define("OS_LOCATION", "OpenSearch.xml");
define("PLUGIN_BORDER", "\t\n");

//Hooks
register_activation_hook(__FILE__, 'OS_Activate');
register_deactivation_hook(__FILE__, 'OS_Deactivate');
add_action('wp_head', OS_Head, 10, 0);

//Functions
function SO_add_pages(){
add_options_page('OpenSearch', 'OpenSearch', 10, __FILE__, 'OS_Menu');
}
function OS_Activate(){
clearstatcache();

$os_file = "\"1.0\" encoding=\"US-ASCII\"?>\n";
$os_file .= "\"http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/\">\n";
$os_file .= "\t".get_bloginfo('name')."\n";
$os_file .= "\tSearch ".get_bloginfo('name')."\n";
$os_file .= "\tSearch ".get_bloginfo('home')."\n";
$os_file .= "\t".get_the_tag_list('',',','')."\n";
$os_file .= "\t".get_bloginfo('admin_email')."\n";
$os_file .= "\t\"text/html\" template=\"http://gedachtegoed.tsdme.nl/?s={searchTerms}\"/>\n";
$os_file .= "\t\"48\" width=\"48\" type=\"image/png\">".get_bloginfo('home')."/favicon.png\n";
$os_file .= "\t\"example\" searchTerms=\"cat\" />\n";
$os_file .= "";

$os_xml = @fopen(GetHomePath().OS_LOCATION, "wb");
if($os_xml){
flock($os_xml, LOCK_EX);
fwrite($os_xml, $os_file);
fclose($os_xml);
}
$gz_xml = @gzopen(GetHomePath().OS_LOCATION.".gz", "wb9");
if($gz_xml){
flock($gz_xml, LOCK_EX);
gzwrite($gz_xml, $os_file);
gzclose($gz_xml);
}
}

function OS_Deactivate(){
if(file_exists(GetHomePath().OS_LOCATION)){
unlink(GetHomePath().OS_LOCATION);
}
if(file_exists(GetHomePath().OS_LOCATION.".gz")){
unlink(GetHomePath().OS_LOCATION.".gz");
}
}

function OS_Head(){
echo PLUGIN_BORDER;
echo "\t\"search\" type=\"application/opensearchdescription+xml\" title=\"".get_bloginfo('name')." Search\" href=\"".get_bloginfo('url')."/".OS_LOCATION."\" />\n";
echo PLUGIN_BORDER;
}

/**
* Returns the path to the blog directory
*
* @since 3.0
* @access public
* @author Arne Brachhold
* @return string The full path to the blog directory
*/
function GetHomePath() {

$res="";
//Check if we are in the admin area -> get_home_path() is avaiable
if(function_exists("get_home_path")) {
$res = get_home_path();
} else {
//get_home_path() is not available, but we can't include the admin
//libraries because many plugins check for the "check_admin_referer"
//function to detect if you are on an admin page. So we have to copy
//the get_home_path function in our own...
$home = get_option( 'home' );
if ( $home != '' && $home != get_option( 'siteurl' ) ) {
$home_path = parse_url( $home );
$home_path = $home_path['path'];
$root = str_replace( $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"], '', $_SERVER["SCRIPT_FILENAME"] );
$home_path = trailingslashit( $root.$home_path );
} else {
$home_path = ABSPATH;
}

$res = $home_path;
}
return $res;
}
?>

Have fun with it and good luck to the person that is developing the other OpenSearch plugin!

CodeDump » PHP

Impressed about WordPress

My new favorite function: map

OpenSearch WordPress Plugin