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.

1. Do I need to change the code above in order to put it within functions.php?
2. 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

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")
?>