Question

This seems like a simple question, but has proven to be difficult to find information for.

I’m working with some WordPress plugins that have a terrible output – specifically, The Events Calendar 1.6.5. This plugin has PHP files for the output of event content like gridview.php, list.php, single.php, and table.php. I am familiar with hooking into the functions that these files call to override how the plugin works, but I need to change the entire display format to fit my theme.

Is there a way to override these display files, or do I just make my own themed file and call the same functions that the plugin files use?

Answer 1

I was searching for a similar answer. I’m not exactly sure how Events Calendar is implemented, but speaking from experience of having done something similar with Business Directly Plugin, you can overwrite the hooks by having it hook to your own methods from your theme’s functions.php file.

Here is an except I wrote to override the hook ‘wpbdm_show-add-listing-form’:

/*
 * Fix the horrible output of wpbusdirman_displaypostform() from wpbusdirman.php
 * 
 * This is done by overriding the wpbdm_show-add-listing-form hook with my own function
 */
add_filter('wpbdm_show-add-listing-form', 'alternative_wpbusdirman_displaypostform', 10, 4);

// Ensure that the method signature is the same (same order of vars, same 
function alternative_wpbusdirman_displaypostform($makeactive = 1, $wpbusdirmanerrors = '', $neworedit = 'new', $wpbdmlistingid = '')
{
    // This assumes that the Business Directory Plugin is installed
    if (!function_exists("wpbusdirman_displaypostform"))
    {
        // If the funct doesn't exist then it probably isn't installed
        return '';
    }

    // Call the method and regex parse out the bits we don't want
    $original_output = wpbusdirman_displaypostform($makeactive, $wpbusdirmanerrors, $neworedit, $wpbdmlistingid);

    // Do some fixing of the output. In this example we do nothing and just return what we received.

    return $original_output . " WE EDITED IT!";
}