Ferodynamics Network

popular: profile privacy, mobile privacy

November 28, 2008

I want to introduce you to a new function in 2.7 that might help to reduce the number of admin pages in your WordPress installation. The function allows plugin authors to extend the existing admin pages instead of creating new ones.

Here’s a quick example:

[php]
add_action('admin_init', 'add_my_settings_field');

function add_my_settings_field(){

// The fields are:
//the id the form field will use
//name to display on the page
//callback function
//the name of the page
//the section of the page to add the field to
add_settings_field('my_field_id' , 'My Field Caption' ,
'my_field_callback' , 'writing' , 'default');

//register the setting to make sure it gets checked
register_setting('writing','my_field_id');
}

function my_field_callback(){

//echo out the text field, drop down, or other type of field.
echo '
value="'.attribute_escape(get_option('my_field_id')).'" class="regular-text code" />';

}

In WordPress 2.7 admin pages are made of pages, sections and fields. In the above example I have added a new field to the writing page (Settings > Writing) in the default section.

This not only creates the table rows and table header for the form field, it also saves the value for you. The above code is everything you need to add the new question.

The value can be accessed again using get_option(‘my_field_id’).

You could just as easily add it to the remote_publishing section, by changing the last attribute in the add_settings_field function in the example to ‘remote_publishing’.

If you take a look at the options-writing.php page in wp-admin you will see that beneath each section there is a function, do_settings_fields, that lists the page and the section in its arguments; i.e. do_settings_fields(‘writing’, ‘remote_publishing’)

These tell you the settings you need to add fields in that part of the page.

I think this is a very important step in helping to reduce the clutter in WordPress, no longer will a new admin page be needed for a single setting if it could sit in an existing page.

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  updated 1 seconds ago
Friday, 11am
ala_747

Thank you very much for your answer :)

I've tried to do this but $this->adb value is always returning 'd' (the last item of my $as array).

I think I'll need to do it the old way (a new admin page) :(

Again, thanks for your time!

Friday, 10am
Andrew Rickmann

What I usually do is to make sure the plugin and all its functions are contained within a class and then assigned the values to the class so the callback function can access them by using $this->myVar i.e.

class myPlugin
{

private $myVar = 10;

function myCallBack(){

$newVar = $this->myVar;

}

}

Friday, 8am
ala_747

That's awesome! Thank you for sharing!!

But I'm trying to figure out how to pass an argument to the callback function. Actually, I don't know if it could be done :(

Eg.


$as = array('A', 'B', 'C', 'D');
$adb = null;

function my_new_settings(){
global $as;
foreach($as as $a):

$adb = sanitize_title($a);

register_setting('media',"{$adb}_1");
register_setting('media',"{$adb}_2");

add_settings_field("{$adb}" , "{$a} setting:" ,
'my_new_callback' , 'media' , 'default');

endforeach;
}

function my_new_callback(){
global $adb;

echo "<label for="{$adb}_1">Setting 1</label>
<input name="{$adb}_1" id="{$adb}_1" value="".attribute_escape(get_option("{$adb}_1"))."" class="small-text" type="text">
<label for="{$adb}_2">Setting 2</label>
<input name="{$adb}_2" id="{$adb}_2" value="".attribute_escape(get_option("{$adb}_2"))."" class="small-text" type="text">
";
}

add_action('admin_init', 'my_new_settings');

Maybe I'm missing something? Thanks in advance!