WordPress 2.8 Single Post Navigation Widget

Since WordPress 2.8, there is a new Widget API. In our post Build A WordPress 2.8 Widget With The New Widget API, I have used a simple example to describe how to build a Widget. This time Heiko and I’ve created something more complex.

It is a Post Navigation Widget, which lists in the single post view (single.php) a specific number of posts which were published before this post and a certain number of posts which were published after this post. I think this is a nice way to show older posts in the sidebar. Here’s a screenshot, left of the backend, right of the sidebar:

I created a query to check if the class WP_Widget even exists, so the user won’t get any error messages in WordPress versions prior to 2.8.

 'wpe_widget_post_navi', 'description' => __( "Some posts before and after the current post") );
            $this->WP_Widget('wpe-post-navi', __('WPE Single Post Navigation'), $widget_ops);
        }

        function widget($args, $instance) {
            if(is_single()) {
                global $post, $wpdb;
                extract($args);

                if ( !$number = (int) $instance['number'] )
                    $number = 5;
                elseif( $number < 1 )
                    $number = 1;
                elseif( $number > 10 )
                    $number = 10;

                $title_before 		= apply_filters('widget_title', empty($instance['title_before']) ? 'Posts before' : $instance['title_before']);
                $title_after	 	= apply_filters('widget_title', empty($instance['title_after']) ? 'Posts after' : $instance['title_after']);
                $before_widget_2	= preg_replace("/(wpe\-post\-navi-\d+)/", "$1-1", $before_widget);

                $querystr = "
                    SELECT *
                    FROM $wpdb->posts wposts
                    WHERE wposts.ID != $post->ID
                    AND wposts.post_type = 'post'
                    AND wposts.post_status = 'publish'
                    AND wposts.post_date %s '$post->post_date'
                    ORDER BY wposts.post_date %s
                    LIMIT $number
                 ";

                $leading_posts = $wpdb->get_results(sprintf($querystr, '<', 'DESC'), OBJECT);
                $trailing_posts = $wpdb->get_results(sprintf($querystr, '>', 'ASC'), OBJECT);

                if ($trailing_posts && count($trailing_posts)) {
                    echo $before_widget_2 . $before_title . $title_before . $after_title . "
";
                    $trailing_posts = array_reverse($trailing_posts);
                    foreach ($trailing_posts as $post) {
                        setup_postdata($post);
                        ?> 
 
" . $after_widget;
                }

                if ($leading_posts && count($leading_posts)) {
                    echo $before_widget . $before_title . $title_after . $after_title . "
";
                    foreach ($leading_posts as $post) {
                        setup_postdata($post);
                        ?> 
 
" . $after_widget;
                }
                wp_reset_query();
            }
        }

        function update( $new_instance, $old_instance ) {
            $instance = $old_instance;
            $instance['title_before'] = strip_tags($new_instance['title_before']);
            $instance['number'] = (int) $new_instance['number'];
            $instance['title_after'] = strip_tags($new_instance['title_after']);

            return $instance;
        }
        function form( $instance ) {
            $title_before = ($instance['title_before'] == '') ? 'Posts before' : esc_attr($instance['title_before']);
            $title_after = ($instance['title_after'] == '') ? 'Posts after' : esc_attr($instance['title_after']);
            if ( !$number = (int) $instance['number'] )
                $number = 5;
            elseif ( $number < 1 )
                $number = 1;
            elseif ( $number > 10 )
                $number = 10;
    ?>
            
Title before:
            
            
Title after:
            
            
Number of posts to show before and after current post:
            

            (at most 10)
    

Most of this should be self-explanatory. Now to the function widget () , which does the actual work. Here we had to do a little trick, because the widget actually creates 2 widgets, and they would get the same ID. That wouldn’t be valid, so the code adds a -1 to one of the widget elements:

$before_widget_2 = preg_replace("/(wpe\-post\-navi-\d+)/", "$1-1", $before_widget);

2 queries are getting executed. One for the posts before this post and one for the posts after this post. if posts are available they will show up on the sidebar.

Download Widget.
Then unpack and copy the code into functions.php. Please note, the widget is for WordPress 2.8.