Quickest way to reference a Wordpress code snippet - php

Question

This question is about tidying up code and better management of said code butI'm a complete novice when it comes to PHP so would appreciate a little help.
I have this code:
<?php
$thumb_id = get_post_thumbnail_id(get_the_ID()); // gets the post thumbnail ID
$args = array(
'order' => 'ASC',
'orderby' => 'rand',
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'post_parent' => $post->ID,
'post_mime_type' => 'image',
'post_status' => null,
'numberposts' => 1,
'exclude' => $thumb_id
);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
echo wp_get_attachment_image($attachment->ID, 'full', false);
}
}
?>
What it does isn't important for reference, the above code gets random images from a Wordpress post randomly generates one of them in a DIV. I want this functionality across many templates but I don't want to cram my PHP files with it as my files will get messy and inefficiently large.
2 questions.
Do I need to change the code above in order to put it within functions.php?
How can I reference the above code (that will be within my functions.php) using a short one liner that I can reuse across many different templates?

Answer 1

You may like to try putting the snippet in to a function, inside functions.php, and passing it a few parameters, allowing the usage to be more flexible.
Untested, but this takes an array of options, and overwrites the default values (e.g for changing the order or orderby etc on a per-use basis). As an optional parameter you can pass a post_id, in case you want to query a post that isn't the current one.
It also returns an array of rather than outputs them directly, which can be seen as the preferred way of working with functions.
// functions.php
function get_random_post_image($options=array(), $post_id=NULL) {
if($post_id != NULL) :
$thumb_id = get_post_thumbnail_id($post_id);
else :
$thumb_id = get_post_thumbnail_id(get_the_ID());
endif;
$default_args = array(
'order' => 'ASC',
'orderby' => 'rand',
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'post_parent' => $post->ID,
'post_mime_type' => 'image',
'post_status' => null,
'numberposts' => 1,
'exclude' => $thumb_id
);
// merge custom options
$args = array_merge($default_args, $options);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
$images = array();
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
$images[] = wp_get_attachment_image($attachment->ID, 'full', false);
}
return $images;
}
return false; // or, return default image/placeholder
}
// and within your template/posts:
if(function_exists('get_random_post_image')) :
$images = get_random_post_image(array('order'=>'DESC')); // overwrite `ASC`
if($images) :
foreach($images as $img) {
echo '<div class="post-img"> ' . $img . '</div>';
}
else :
echo 'No images!';
endif;
endif;
not perfect; but you could extend it easily enough.

Answer 2

1. You need to get out the <?php and ?> if you already put your code inside those tags
example functions.php:
<?php
blah blah
....
// your code here
$thumb_id = get_post_thumbnail_id(get_the_ID()); // gets the post thumbnail ID
$args = array(
'order' => 'ASC',
'orderby' => 'rand',
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'post_parent' => $post->ID,
'post_mime_type' => 'image',
'post_status' => null,
'numberposts' => 1,
'exclude' => $thumb_id
);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
echo wp_get_attachment_image($attachment->ID, 'full', false);
}
}
// be careful, only one "?>" in the file, no nested "<?php ?>" blocks
?>
2. Use include(), include_once(), require() or require_once() and save your function in another file, so you can reference that file.
random_img.php
<?php
$thumb_id = get_post_thumbnail_id(get_the_ID()); // gets the post thumbnail ID
$args = array(
'order' => 'ASC',
'orderby' => 'rand',
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'post_parent' => $post->ID,
'post_mime_type' => 'image',
'post_status' => null,
'numberposts' => 1,
'exclude' => $thumb_id
);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
echo wp_get_attachment_image($attachment->ID, 'full', false);
}
}
?>
functions.php
<?php
blah blah
....
include ("random_img.php")
?>