Category: web

Today I put the finishing touches to my customized archives widget. While I am tempted to submit it to the WordPress plugin repository I will hold off for a little bit. The reason: I’m not quite ready. That will usually be my excuse.

Enough of that on to the code!

The issue

I love using archives only because I love some aspects of history. The one problem I had with the way the core widget handles it is that it shows every single month with no set limit. I wanted to be able to set a limit without having to use code or a child theme to modify the widgetized areas.

The steps

In order to create a simple plugin one of the first things I had to do was look at the core default widgets. That file is found under

/wp-includes/default-widgets.php

and houses all the basic widgets that come standard with WordPress. Next, I created a blank folder with a blank PHP file with the name of my new plugin; used the standard header for a plugin and input all my information:

/*
Plugin Name: Lost Archives
Plugin URI:
Description: Custom Archive Widget with a few extra options.
Version: 0.1
Author: Jose Castaneda
Author URI: http://josemcastaneda.com
License: public domain

*/

The next thing was to get the basic logic behind what I wanted my newly created widget to do. What information I wanted to gather from a user and what to pass so that it will display properly on the front end. The basic one being the title of the widget. Next I wanted the ability to pass a number so that it sets the limit to how many things to show. Finally I wanted the ability to to chose what type of archive to display; if I wanted a weekly, daily, or monthly type of archive.

The code

In order to gather the information I first needed a form. Thankfully WordPress makes things pretty easy with the widget class. By creating a new class that extends the WP_Widget class I can override the

function form(){}

and use it to create the form the user sees on the back-end. This was a little tricky in that I had to run a check for what is currently selected and what isn’t; and, again, WordPress has a function for this:

selected( $selected, $current, $echo)

In order to display the different options I had to use a foreach() loop in order to display the various choices. The code looked a little like:

foreach( $array as $key => $value ){
    echo $key;
}

Now I know I could have cleaned things up a little bit but that is for another time and another post.

The end result

And the final product is:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Lost Archives
Plugin URI:
Description: Custom Archive Widget with a few extra options.
Version: 0.1
Author: Jose Castaneda
Author URI: https://blog.josemcastaneda.com
License: public domain

*/

add_action( 'widgets_init', 'lost_archive_widget' );
function lost_archive_widget(){
    register_widget( 'lost_archives' );
}

class lost_archives extends WP_Widget {
    function __construct() {
        $widget_ops = array(
            'classname'   => 'archives_extended',
            'description' => esc_html__( 'Customized Archives wigdet.', 'text-domain' )
            );
        parent::__construct( 'solea_archives_widget', esc_html__( 'Archives', 'text-domain' ), $widget_ops );
    }

    function widget( $args, $instance ){
        extract( $args );
        $limit = ( empty( $instance['limit'] ) ) ? '12' : $instance['limit'];
        $type  = ( empty( $instance['type'] ) ) ? 'monthly' : $instance['type'];
        $title = apply_filters('widget_title', empty($instance['title']) ? __( 'Archives' ) : $instance['title'], $instance, $this->id_base);

        $content = wp_get_archives( array(
            'type'            => $type,
            'limit'           => $limit,
            'format'          => 'html',
            'before'          => '',
            'after'           => '',
            'show_post_count' => false,
            'echo'            => 0,
            'order'           => 'DESC'
            ) );

        $output = '%1$s %2$s %3$s %4$s <ul>%5$s</ul> %6$s';
        printf($output, $before_widget, $before_title, $title, $after_title, $content, $after_widget );
    }

    function update( $new_instance, $old_instance ){
        $instance = $old_instance;
        $new_instance = wp_parse_args( (array) $new_instance, array( 'title' => '', 'type' => '', 'limit' => '') );
        $instance['title'] = strip_tags($new_instance['title']);
        $instance['limit'] = $new_instance['limit'];
        $instance['type'] = $new_instance['type'];
        return $instance;
    }

    function form( $instance ){
        $instance = wp_parse_args( (array)$instance, array( 'title', 'limit', 'type' ) );
        $title    = strip_tags($instance['title']);
        $limit    = $instance['limit'];
        $type     = $instance['type'];
        $types    = array(
            esc_html__( 'Post', 'text-domain' )    => 'postbypost',
            esc_html__( 'Daily', 'text-domain' )   => 'daily',
            esc_html__( 'Weekly', 'text-domain' )  => 'weekly',
            esc_html__( 'Monthly', 'text-domain' ) => 'monthly'
        ); ?>
        <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>">< ?php _e('Title:'); ?></label>
        <input id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>" class="widefat" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('title'); ?>" type="text" value="< ?php echo esc_attr($title); ?>" />
        <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('limit'); ?>">Limit:</label>
        <input id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('limit'); ?>" class="widefat" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('limit'); ?>" type="text" value="< ?php echo esc_attr($limit); ?>" />
        <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('type'); ?>">Type:</label>
        <select id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('type'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('type'); ?>">
        <?php foreach( $types as $k => $t ){
        echo '<option selected="selected" value="' . $t . '">'. $k . '</option>';
        } ?>
        </select>
        <?php
    }

}

Keeping in mind this works with WordPress 3.5 and above and I haven’t tested any other versions.