get_page_by_slug in wordpress

I'm developing a wordpress site and I need a function that will retrieve the page information from a given slug. I'd been looking into wordpress functions but I can't find it, what I saw are just get_page_by_path and get_page_by_title which are not the perfect function I need for the functionality I need for the site.

So, here's what I did. I checked out the existing functionality which is most likely the same of what I wanted to achieve get_page_by_title then from there I was able to arrived a new function get_page_by_slug that will retrieve the page information from a slug.

Please see below, hope this helps a lot on building your wordpress site and hopefully this would be included on the next version of wordpress.

/**
 * Retrieve a page given its slug.
 * @uses $wpdb
 *
 * @param string $page_slug Page slug
 * @param string $output Optional. Output type. OBJECT, ARRAY_N, or ARRAY_A. Default OBJECT.
 * @param string $post_type Optional. Post type. Default page.
 * @return WP_Post|null WP_Post on success or null on failure
 */
function get_page_by_slug($page_slug, $output = OBJECT, $post_type = 'page' ) {
    global $wpdb;
    $page = $wpdb->get_var( $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_name = %s AND post_type= %s", $page_slug, $post_type ) );
    if ( $page )
        return get_post( $page, $output );

    return null;
}

Please take note that you use this as well on retrieving post coz technically, page and post are the same but with different post type, you just need to pass on third parameter as "post". To make it much clearer with names, please see get_post_by_slug function below.

/**
 * Retrieve a post given its slug.
 * @uses $wpdb
 *
 * @param string $slug Post slug
 * @param string $output Optional. Output type. OBJECT, ARRAY_N, or ARRAY_A. Default OBJECT.
 * @param string $type Optional. Post type. Default page.
 * @return WP_Post|null WP_Post on success or null on failure
 */
function get_post_by_slug($slug, $output = OBJECT, $type = 'post' ) {
    global $wpdb;
    $post = $wpdb->get_var( $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_name = %s AND post_type= %s", $slug, $type ) );
    if ( $post )
        return get_post( $post, $output );

    return null;
}

in_array function in javascript

This is a simple post for the converted in_array function in javascript. This function will return boolean whether the value is in the array or not.

function in_array(array, id) {
    for(var i=0; i<array.length; i++) {
        if (array[i]==id) return true;
    }
    return false;
}


Hope you like this post, probably short but will help a lot.

Create login page in your wordpress site

You can use wordpress admin login functionality for your own website login page. It will use your wordpress table wp_users to validate credentials. Advantage here is that you can manage users via wordpress admin.

If you are using a script outside your template, you should require wp-load.php so you can use its functionality.

require_once( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-load.php' );

If your login page is inside your template say you have your page-login.php, then you don't need to require wp-load.php coz it's included already upon loading the page.

Once you have that in place, you can now call the functionality to validate login credential. You just simply call the function user_pass_ok() with parameters: username and password.

Please see sample usage below, you can either use it via GET or POST method, depends on how you handle your login page.

$username = @$_POST['username'];
$password = @$_POST['password'];

if (user_pass_ok($username, $password)) {
    echo 'login success';
} else {
    echo 'login failed';
}

This is just a simple post but hope this helps in a way. Please leave a comment if you like this post.

Box API Integration on PHP

I'd been busy and not able to post anything here for a long time. Anyway, I wanted to post this integration I just did so that I will have a reference if ever I have to develop something with box.com.

First of all, you need to register an account on the link below. You can choose to have a FREE or personal account if you want to try it out.

https://app.box.com/pricing/

After the registration, you need to create an application that we will use for integration.
Go to http://developers.box.com then click "Get API Key" button to create an app.
The application you created will have client id and client secret, save it somewhere else coz we will use it later on.

Once we have the application and the credential for API access, we can now start the coding part, just follow the simple steps below.

We need to authorize our application to access our box account. We can either access the authorize URL via GET or POST method with response_type, state, client_id and redirect_uri parameter. The redirect uri might need to be on https but for localhost testing, you can use http. You can also set the redirect uri on your box application under oauth2 section.

https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/authorize?response_type=code&state=authenticated&client_id=<your client id>&redirect_uri=<your redirect uri>

The user will have to enter his/her credential and grant access to our application. After authorizing the app, box will redirect the user to the redirect uri parameter or the redirect uri set on your box application.

The box will redirect the user via GET method with the "code" parameter which we will use to get an access token. Once you have the code, you will need to submit POST request to box with the code, client_id, and client_secret parameter.

endpoint url:
https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/token

parameters:
grant_type = authorization_code
code = <this will be the code you get from box after authorize process>
client_id = <your box client id>
client_secret = <your box client secret>

The script below will get the "code" parameter from box in exchange with an access token and refresh token. The output will be the access token, refresh token and expiration. You need to store those information either via session or database to call API methods after.

$code = $_GET['code'];
if ($code) token($code);
function token($code='') {
    $client_id = '<your box client id>';
    $client_secret = '<your box client secret>';
        $url = "https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/token";
        $param = "grant_type=authorization_code&code=$code&client_id=".$client_id."&client_secret=".$client_secret;

        $curlcmd = "curl $url -d '$param' -X POST";
        $output = exec($curlcmd);
        $json = json_decode($output);

        $access_token = $json->access_token;
        $refresh_token = $json->refresh_token;
    }

For you to have an idea on how it works with a readily client API, please see below. Hope this will help you with your development. Leave a comment if you like this post.

<?php

$box = new wu_boxapi();
// this will set the redirect uri which is the same script
// you just need to put the name of you script here replacing "/box-client-api.php" which is my current file.
$box->set_redirect_uri(getcwd().'/box-client-api.php');

// get access token
$code = $_GET['code'];
if ($code) $box->token($code);

// list folders in your account
$folder_id = 0;
$box->list_folders($folder_id);

// search for files in your account
$keyword = '';
$box->search($keyword);

class boxapi {
    var $box_email = '<your box email account>';
    var $client_id = '<your box client id>';
    var $client_secret = '<your box client secret>';
    var $redirect_uri = '';
    var $access_token = '';
    var $refresh_token = '';
    var $force_refresh = false;

    function __construct() {
    //  nothing to do here...
    }

    function set_redirect_uri($uri='') {
        $this->redirect_uri = urlencode($uri);
    }

    function authorize() {
        $url = "https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/authorize?response_type=code&state=authenticated&client_id=".$this->client_id."&redirect_uri=".$this->redirect_uri;
        header("Location: $url");
    }

    function check_token() {
        $this->access_token = $_SESSION['access_token'];
        $this->refresh_token = $_SESSION['refresh_token'];
        $timediff = time() - $_SESSION['timestamp'];

        if (!@$this->access_token) $this->authorize();
        if ($timediff >= 3600 || $this->force_refresh) $this->refresh();
    }

    function token($code='') {
        $url = "https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/token";
        $param = "grant_type=authorization_code&code=$code&client_id=".$this->client_id."&client_secret=".$this->client_secret;

        $curlcmd = "curl $url -d '$param' -X POST";
        $output = exec($curlcmd);
        $json = json_decode($output);

        $this->access_token = $json->access_token;
        $this->refresh_token = $json->refresh_token;

        $_SESSION['access_token'] = $this->access_token;
        $_SESSION['refresh_token'] = $this->refresh_token;
        $_SESSION['timestamp'] = time();
    }

    function refresh() {
        $url = "https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/token";
        $param = "grant_type=refresh_token&refresh_token=".$this->refresh_token."&client_id=".$this->client_id."&client_secret=".$this->client_secret;

        $curlcmd = "curl $url -d '$param' -X POST";
        $output = exec($curlcmd);
        $json = json_decode($output);

        $this->access_token = $json->access_token;
        $this->refresh_token = $json->refresh_token;

        $_SESSION['access_token'] = $this->access_token;
        $_SESSION['refresh_token'] = $this->refresh_token;
        $_SESSION['timestamp'] = time();
    }

    function list_folders($folder_id=0) {
        $this->check_token();
        $url = "https://api.box.com/2.0/folders/$folder_id";

        $curlcmd = "curl $url -H 'Authorization: Bearer ".$this->access_token."'";
        $output = exec($curlcmd);
        $json = json_decode($output);

        var_dump(@$json);
    }

    function search($keyword='', $limit=30, $offset=0) {
        $this->check_token();
        $url = "https://api.box.com/2.0/search";
        $param = "query=$keyword&limit=$limit&offset=$offset";

        $curlcmd = "curl '$url?$param' -H 'Authorization: Bearer ".$this->access_token."'";
        $output = exec($curlcmd);
        $json = json_decode($output);

        var_dump(@$json);
    }
}

?>

How to setup your indent spacing on Mac iTerm2

To change your indent spacing on your Mac iTerm2, you just need to locate your vimrc file in your mac and usually, it is located on this path /usr/share/vim/vimrc.

Once you're able to locate your vimrc, you just need to add or update the settings of your tabstop, the value is equal to the number of spaces you want to set for your indent.

Please see sample below.

set tabstop=4 " a tab is four spaces

Hope this helps a lot coz it's good to have a standard indent for your programming.

How to list archive years per category in wordpress

This post will teach you how to list down archive years per category in your wordpress site. The script below is using SQL statement that will query from your wordpress table and the tables involve are: posts, term_relationships, term_taxonomy, and terms.

"SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(post_date) FROM $wpdb->posts INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->term_relationships.object_id) INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy ON ($wpdb->term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy='category') INNER JOIN $wpdb->terms ON ($wpdb->terms.term_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id) WHERE $wpdb->terms.slug='<your category slug here>' ORDER BY post_date DESC"

To get the archive years per category slug, you just need to supply it below.

.... WHERE $wpdb->terms.slug='<your category slug here>' ORDER BY post_date DESC"); 

If you want to select using your category name, then change the condition above with name field $wpdb->terms.name.

.... WHERE $wpdb->terms.name='<your category name here>' ORDER BY post_date DESC"); 

<ul>
<?php

$years = $wpdb->get_col("SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(post_date) FROM $wpdb->posts INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->term_relationships.object_id) INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy ON ($wpdb->term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy='category') INNER JOIN $wpdb->terms ON ($wpdb->terms.term_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id) WHERE $wpdb->terms.slug='<your category slug here>' ORDER BY post_date DESC");               

foreach($years as $year) : ?>
        <li><a href="<?php echo get_year_link($year); ?>"><?php echo $year;?></a></li>                          
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul> 

Please leave a comment if you like this post. Happy coding!!

Get the blog information from your wordpress site

We have a lot of ways to get the blog information from our wordpress site but below are the 2 functions that we commonly use to get it. (1) bloginfo() and (2) get_blogingo().

BLOGINFO() - This function will display the information about your blog, this is mostly gathered from the information you supplied in your blog settings. It can be use within your wordpress template. This function always print the result to the browser. If you need to get the actual value, you should use get_bloginfo() below.

Usage: bloginfo('<parameter>'); 
Parameters:

• name - the title set for the blog.
  
• description - the description set for the blog.
• admin_email - the email address of administrator of the blog.
• url - the url of the blog.
• wpurl - the url of the wordpress blog. this is usually the same as "url" parameter.
• stylesheet_directory - the directory of the stylesheet of the blog. this is usually the same as the theme directory that the blog was activated.
• stylesheet_url - the url of the stylesheet of the blog. depends also on the activated theme that the blog was activated.
• template_directory - the theme directory that the blog was activated.
• template_url - the url of the theme directory that the blog was activated.
• atom_url - the url of the atom feed.
• rss2_url - the url of the rss feed. this is the latest version of rss feed. example: http://example.com/myblog/feed
• rss_url - the url of the rss feed. this is the old version of rss feed. example: http://example.com/myblog/feed/rss
• pingback_url - the url of xmlrpc. example: http://example.com/myblog/wp/xmlrpc.php
• rdf_url - the url of rdf feed. example: http://example.com/myblog/feed/rdf
• comments_atom_url - the url o
• f comments atom feed. example: http://example.com/myblog/comments/feed/atom
• comments_rss2_url - the url of comments rss feed. example: http://example.com/myblog/comments/feed
• charset - the meta tag character set of your blog. this is usually in UTF-8 to support most of the characters.
• html_type - the html type of your blog. usually in "text/html" type.
• language - the main language of your blog. by default set to "en-US".
• version - the version of your wordpress blog.
• text_direction - don't know about this but this is usually set to "ltr". 

GET_BLOGINFO() - This function will return the information about the blog, the information here are mostly gathered from the information you supplied in your blog settings. It can be use within your wordpress template. This function will only return the results and if you need to print the result you need to either echo the result or use bloginfo() function above.

Usage: echo get_bloginfo('<parameter>'); or $info = get_bloginfo('<parameter>'); 

Parameters: (parameters are the same as above)


Hope this helps. Happy coding with wordpress!!