Author: Tom (Page 43 of 427)

In the previous post, I talked about the reasons using PHP filtering functions is more useful rather than not.

In short, doing so helps to provide a level of validation that’s built into the language so that we don’t have to re-write something. Naturally, there are caveats.

For example, if you’re having to validate a value that is of non-Latin characters, then you’re going to go have to go it alone and implement validation with perhaps a regular expression.

But if you’re using email addresses, URLs, numbers, IP addresses, and so many more things, then you’re in a good position to use something that already exists.

Anyway, all of the above is still about filtering variables. What about inputs, though? That is, those that come from $_POST or $_GET. It’s possible to use a similar strategy with a different function and different filter set.

But if you understand the basics presented in the last post, then this post will not be very different.

I’ve talked about data sanitization in WordPress in previous posts. This is a topic that’s important not only for those of us working to build solutions for others in WordPress, but also for those who are writing code that will directly interact with a database via PHP.

Sure, there are native WordPress functions to make this process easier, but there are also built-in PHP filtering functions to help with this. Namely filter_var and filter_input and these are things that I think are helpful for PHP developers to know.

After you’ve worked with WordPress for any extended amount of time, it’s likely that you’ve worked with post metadata in some capacity. Perhaps you’ve simply read metadata from the database, or maybe you’ve both written to and read from the database table, as well.

It can be a really powerful API whenever you need to associate certain information with your posts (or, if you’re into abstracting things even more, to your models).

That said, what happens when you want to include information from the metadata table but don’t have the convenience of plugins such as SearchWP or Relevanssi?

Furthermore, assume the use case is just for administrators and it’s only for the administration area of WordPress. That is, you want to search your posts from within the All Posts screen but you want to include the post metadata in the search criteria, as well.

What then?