Hot on the heels of yesterday's post, I've now made all of this blog available in text-only mode.
Simply append .txt to the URl of any page and you'll get back the contents in plain UTF-8 text. No formatting, no images (although you can see the alt text), no nothing!
This was slightly tricky to get right! While there might be an easier way to do it, here's how I got it to work.
Firstly, when someone requests /whatever.txt, WordPress is going to 404 - because that page doesn't exist. So, my theme's functions.php, detects any URls which end in .txt and redirects it to a different template.
// Theme Switcheradd_filter( "template_include", "custom_theme_switch" );function custom_theme_switch( $template ) { // What was requested? $requested_url = $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]; // Check if the URL ends with .txt if ( substr( $requested_url, -4 ) === ".txt") { // Get the path to the custom template $custom_template = get_template_directory() . "/templates/txt-template.php"; // Check if the custom template exists if ( file_exists( $custom_template ) ) { return $custom_template; } } // Return the default template return $template;}
The txt-template.php file is more complex. It takes the requested URl, strips off the .txt, matches it against the WordPress rewrite rules, and then constructs the WP_Query which would have been run if the .txt wasn't there.
// Run the query for the URl requested$requested_url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; // This will be /whatever$blog_details = wp_parse_url( home_url() ); // Get the blog's domain to construct a full URl$query = get_query_for_url( $blog_details["scheme"] . "://" . $blog_details["host"] . substr( $requested_url, 0, -4 ));function get_query_for_url( $url ) { // Get all the rewrite rules global $wp_rewrite; // Get the WordPress site URL path $site_path = parse_url( get_site_url(), PHP_URL_PATH ) . "/"; // Parse the requested URL $url_parts = parse_url( $url ); // Remove the domain and site path from the URL // For example, change `https://example.com/blog/2024/04/test` to just `2024/04/test` $url_path = isset( $url_parts['path'] ) ? str_replace( $site_path, '', $url_parts['path'] ) : ''; // Match the URL against WordPress rewrite rules $rewrite_rules = $wp_rewrite->wp_rewrite_rules(); $matched_rule = false; foreach ( $rewrite_rules as $pattern => $query ) { if ( preg_match( "#^$pattern#", $url_path, $matches ) ) { $matched_rule = $query; break; } } // Replace each occurrence of $matches[N] with the corresponding value foreach ( $matches as $key => $value ) { $matched_rule = str_replace( "$matches[{$key}]", $value, $matched_rule ); } // Turn the query string into a WordPress query $query_params = array(); parse_str( parse_url( $matched_rule, PHP_URL_QUERY), $query_params ); // Construct a new WP_Query object using the extracted query parameters $query = new WP_Query($query_params); // Return the result of the query return $query;}
The more I'm thinking about it, the more I consider it.
I want to add a map for my bicycle rides, but I can't find any good PHP maps. The PHP versions of Leaflet on GitHub are no good. They don't work at all. They just gives you errors like "can't load class" or something like that.
So even if I am against it only to challenge myself, I consider using Leaflet in JS for airikr.me/biking.
Or do you have any solution in PHP that works out of the box?
If you can compose objects of other objects and use interfaces over concretions, you make it much easier to modify your app in future.
Ultimately the time you take to design your app will be spent now (in design) or later (in maintenance). Since most apps spend most of their life in maintenance, don’t make the mistake of saving time now and spending it later.
The Payload May 9, 2024 Explore this week's edition of The Payload, which features the latest developments in the Symfony, Drupal, PHP, Cybersecurity, and Fediverse communities. #symfony#drupal#PHP#cybersecurity#fediverse
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Currently working on a rewrite of an old application (PHP 5.6, was probably written in an even earlier version) by building a new one in PHP 8.3 and migrating all the data across.
I don't usually recommend rewrites but occasionally it's more cost-effective than trying to fix really old code.
Even though I work with legacy code every day, the changes in 8.3 (and libraries that require it) make life so much nicer.