Last night, I was asked if I know how to order posts differently in The Loop. I don’t trust The Loop. I much prefer to use WP_Query, as I feel more in control, but my friend had already written a lot of functions that seemed to depend on using The Loop, and I’ve never been one for rocking the boat where live code is concerned!

So, my buddy has the current code and it’s not working:


query_posts($query_string . '&order=asc&orderby=title');


The more perceptive will spot that he’s trying to order his posts by title, rather than by date, but no matter how you order/rename the variables, the results come back the same. A few minutes hunting later leads me to a query string variable called suppress_filters, which is called at the last minute in the query build, which applies things like ordering for stickies. Obviously, if you’re running a custom query, chances are you don’t care about stickies, so simply set suppress_filters to true when calling query_posts() :


query_posts($query_string . '&order=asc&orderby=title&suppress_filters=true');


and the posts in your loop will be ordered the way you told them to be ordered. I’m pretty sure that there’s a point for this in the grand scheme of things, but I’m damned if I can see it.

It’s been literally minutes in the making, but it’s here. Now with lovely added templates, to save you lazy people even more leg work, you can do things like:

{twitter:jaspertandy:avatar_link}

and get , and

{twitter:jaspertandy:username_link}

and get jaspertandy. Awesome, huh? I’ve also added the ability to force re-caching. If someone updates their avatar before your cache refreshes (this will probably only happen with people upgrading, but still!), then you’ll get a dead image link or an error. If you append :force to your tag, their data will be re-cached and their avatar updated:

{twitter:jaspertandy:avatar_link:force}

Becomes . Only use :force if you get broken images, though, as it unnecessarily bullies twitter’s api.

I have also made it easy for you to create your own templates by adding a function with the incredibly convoluted prefix; template_, so your personal functions might look something like:

public function template_jasper_rocks($user_json){
return 'jasper rocks!';
}


Obviously, if you don’t do any scripting then stay away from this or you’ll break stuff. If you do, then make sure your function returns a string to replace the tag and you’re good to go.

As before, if you break it then come crying to the comments box. If you don’t know any PHP, but would still like a custom template, hit up the comments box and if you find this useful, say so. It’s nice to hear from people!

Installation is the same as before, so once you’ve downloaded this, either copy your old config stuff or follow the original post. I’ll do an interface so you don’t have to keep doing this, if it becomes apparent that more than two people are using the plugin!

How to use:
Firstly, you’ll need to install the plugin. Like any other, put this in your plugins directory and go to your admin panel to activate. To decrease the impact on the twitter API, this plugin caches everything you request, so you’ll need a cache directory. The default is “/lib/cache/” so you’ll need to make sure that directory exists and is writable. If you don’t like that directory, create your own, make sure it is writable and edit the following:


/**
* the directory to put cached images in - with the first and last /
*/
private $cache_dir = '/lib/cache/';


It is really important to leave the first and last “/” characters in there, or you’ll get errors. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you’ve ever used Smarty or anything like it, you’ll recognise this straight away. To insert information about a user, insert a tag in this format:

{twitter:username:info}

so inserting {twitter:jaspertandy:profile_image_url} will insert http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/profile_images/62898698/DSC_0004_normal.jpg and {twitter:jaspertandy:description} will insert “Camera-wielding, web-developing lover of cute, fluffy things.” without the quotes, obviously.

There is some information (regarding status updates) that is nested in the format parent/child. To insert this type of data, use the format {twitter:jaspertandy:status/text}, which will insert “@tommsinclair you have to have a BT line – bout £11.50 p/m then you have the internet set up on top of that.”.

This plugin uses the twitter API, specifically the show function. To see what you can get, follow the instructions there and you’ll see what you can embed.