Adding a button
The other day I found a great post that explained how to add a custom button to the WordPress Visual TinyMCE editor.1 It was fairly simple and concise and even includes a zip file of all the parts you would need to install a button into WordPress’s visual TinyMCE editor. I’m not at all sure I could do a better job than that guy, so I’ll just direct you to the link above. :)
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What you get when you don’t use an API
The current version of my WordPress OCD Plugin Stats plugin, is somewhat… clunky.1 When I wrote it I didn’t know that WordPress.org had an API for it’s plugin statistics.2 Thus, the current version essentially scrapes particular WordPress.org plugin pages for information and drops it into the WordPress dashboard.
After poking into the stats on one of my plugin pages the other day I discovered that the source code for the page included several calls to a WordPress.org API. Why should I bother scraping and interpreting a page of HTML when I can just ask WordPress.org to deliver the exact data I need in a nifty JSON format?! I’m very much looking forward to adjusting this plugin to use a more direct and simple call to the WordPress API rather than scraping plugin pages.
In any case, if you’re looking for documentation on this, I found a page in the WordPress Codex and a site with a page devoted to documenting the WordPress.org API.
Default Series TitleWhile posting about my DrawBot adventures, I’ve become increasingly annoyed with my own post series WordPress plugin. If only it had a simple button in the WordPress editor to drop the shortcode for an existing series, it would instantly become so much better. Thus inspired, I delved into WordPress.org and sought out the answers. What I discovered is that while it’s not particularly difficult to add a button to the WordPress text editor, it didn’t seem to be very well documented. I’m still working on how to add a graphical button to the WordPress TinyMCE visual editor, so stay tuned for that. I was ultimately able to glean the necessary information from the WordPress “Quicktags API. However, for your sake1 I’m distilling what I’ve learned right here.
First, I’ll give you an overview of what we’re going to do. If you’re looking to add a button to the WordPress editor, it’s probably because you’re working on a plugin. Thus, I’ll assume you have a working knowledge of plugin development. Your plugin will need to include, at a bare minimum, one action hook and one function which performs the double duty of creating the button and giving the button some kind of ability.
// This action adds a script to the script footer on administrative pages
add_action( 'admin_print_footer_scripts', 'MBSS_quicktags', 100 );
// This is the function that is run at the end of the administrative pages in the script footer
function MBSS_quicktags()
{
// Optional database interactions
// I used this section in my plugin to run a query on the database and return information that would be used in the button
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
// Creates button in the text editor
QTags.addButton( 'MBSS_tag_id', 'Add Series', MBSS_add_series_js );
// Function to append the series shortcode to the end of the post
function MBSS_add_series_js()
{
editor = document.getElementById('content');
editor.value = editor.value + "\n" + "EXAMPLE TEXT TO APPEND TO END OF POST";
}
</script>
<?php
}
And there you have it! One action hook and one function which adds some javascript magic to your WordPress editor in the form of a simple text editor button!
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Lovin’ that source code
While looking at the source code on my Simple Series plugin page, I began to wonder how WordPress.org was serving up all those nifty little stats into the downloads graph. ((Photo courtesy of Windell Oskay)) What I discovered is that there’s a little bit of jQuery magic going on that pulls download data from a WordPress.org API, formats it for niftiness, and inserts it into the dynamically draw SVG graphic of the downloads.
In case you’re interested, the API call looks like this:
http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/downloads.php?slug=simple-series&limit=700&callback=?
I’m now wondering how I can use that data to show something interesting in my OCD Plugin Stats plugin.1
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Making cereals
This weekend, almost an entire year from the last update, I made some revisions to my Simple Series plugin for WordPress.1 This is one of the plugins that I use the most often for WordPress. It’s right up there, in terms of frequency, with the WP-Footnotes plugin that lets me insert footnotes.2
As much as I loved this plugin, it was always a little bit of pain to use. In order for two posts to be associated together in the same series, the title must be listed exactly the same in each post. So, to make sure that I was getting it right, I would open an old post in the relevant series, copy the exact plugin shortcode with the exact title, and paste it into the new post.
With this update you can click the “Add Series” button in the TinyMCE text editor for a post and insert any series title you’ve previously used. It’s not yet as elegant as I would like, but it makes a few button clicks out of a what used to be an annoying process.3 I’ve also added the ability to have a series between pages, posts, or any combination of the two kinds of content types.
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