Question

Ok this is a little complex. I am creating a plugin, and want to find the category ID from the Post page.

That’s the easy part.

What makes it complex is I am doing it within an ob_start (started in a ‘template_redirect’ action) as I want to edit the full page before it is returned to the browser. Again that is easy enough from the ob_start function.

With the ID returned I want to evaluate some php stored in a sql field. I am trying to do this from within the ob_start function

$tui_cifp_insertvalue = tui_cifp_evaluate_html($tui_cifp_insertvalue); 

This calls this

function tui_cifp_evaluate_html($string) { return preg_replace_callback('/(<\?php|<\?|< \?php)(.*?)\?>/si','EvalBuffer', $string); } 

Which in turn calls

function EvalBuffer($string) { ob_start(); eval('$string[2];'); $ret = ob_get_contents(); ob_end_clean(); return $ret; } 

And the php I am trying to evaluate is.

<?php tui_findPostThumbIMG([categoryID],100,100,'categoryintro-thumbnail','','',''); ?> 

This all works outside the ob_start routine, but here even simple php doesn’t work. From within the ob_start routine the plugin breaks and a blank page returns.

So I thought I could evaluate the php before the start of the ob_start and pass the result through a global variable. That works, but at the point this starts using the following, the category ID is not available.

if ( strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 'wp-admin') === false ) {  global $holdvalue;  $tui_cifp_insertvalue = get_option('tui_cifp_insertvalue');  $categories = get_the_category(); $categoryID = $categories[0]->cat_ID;  $tui_cifp_insertvalue = str_replace('[categoryID]', $categoryID, $tui_cifp_insertvalue);  $holdvalue = tui_cifp_evaluate_html($tui_cifp_insertvalue);  add_action('template_redirect','tui_cifp_ob_start'); //  } 

The ob_start function

function tui_cifp_ob_start() {  ob_start('tui_cifp_templatefilter');  } 

Ok I am stumped … any ideas?

I either need to find a hook that executes at the right time so that I have access to the category ID, or I need to work out how to evaluate the php during the ob_start.

Oh … I guess I should say. What I want to do is replace a tag on a wordpress page with some other information saved in a string, but need to be able to do this once the full page if drawn.

Thanks Stephen

PS I have asked this on the wordpress forums without a response. Sorry for the cross posting but I am a little desperate.

Answer 1

Thanks OIS, I appreciate your proposing that solution. It is however doing the same thing as I have been doing. I guess structured differently.

It did however cause me to look at the problem from a different prospective.

What I realised was that get_the_category() needs a parameter and wasn’t getting a category because it was the Post ID that wasn’t available. I solved the problem by doing the setup up front like so.

function tui_cifp_ob_start() {      global $tui_cifp_message, $tui_cifp_div, $wp_query;      if (is_single())      {          $tui_cifp_div = get_option('tui_cifp_div');          if ($tui_cifp_div !== '')          {          $thePostID = $wp_query->post->ID;         $categories = get_the_category($thePostID);          $categoryID = $categories[0]->cat_ID;          $tui_cifp_message = get_option('tui_cifp_message');          $categoryTitle = $categories[0]->cat_name;         $categoryDescription = $categories[0]->category_description;          $tui_cifp_message = str_replace('[categoryID]', $categoryID, $tui_cifp_message);         $tui_cifp_message = str_replace('[categoryTitle]', $categoryTitle, $tui_cifp_message);         $tui_cifp_message = str_replace('[categoryDescription]', $categoryDescription, $tui_cifp_message);         $tui_cifp_message = $tui_cifp_div.$tui_cifp_message;          $tui_cifp_message = tui_cifp_evaluate_html($tui_cifp_message);          }          ob_start('tui_cifp_templatefilter');      }  } 

Thanks again.