Dirify plug-in attempt

Help me out here: Isn’t that, basically, what EE’s url_title conversion does? If so, you might be able to get, uh, inspired there.

Thanks Ingmar and yes that’s exactly what I would like to do but the url_title conversion takes the current URL title and converts that - I would like to do the same thing but to a custom field data instead - I cannot see how I could use the url_title to do this.

You could just use the find and replace plugin to replace spaces with underscores or hyphens or any combination thereof.

Thanks Lisa - this helps a lot. However I use an Apache server and the names of all the images are in lower case and the SRN product numbers are in upper case. I could go through and rename them with the appropriate upper case characters but I shudder at the thought of the RSI…

Ingmar’s right that ExpressionEngine’s url title creation method can handle this for you, with a bit more finesse than the PHP above. The only thing you need to add for your specific usage is a strtolower(). Follow the Plugin API instructions for creating your plugin file, but for the function use:

function Plugin_name($str = '')
{
    global $REGX;
    $this->return_data = strtolower($REGX->create_url_title($str));
}

Thanks Ingmar and yes that’s exactly what I would like to do but the url_title conversion takes the current URL title and converts that - I would like to do the same thing but to a custom field data instead - I cannot see how I could use the url_title to do this.

I did not necessarily mean directly, but it should be possible to reuse EE’s code for that purpose.

EDIT: I see Derek has shown you a very elegant solution along these lines.

Thanks Derek! I will go through the Plug-in instructions and give it a go.

I have followed the Plug-In building instructions - and have built the file. It now shows up the the control panel so that s good progress. On the template though I am using the plug-in like this:

/images/{exp:dirify}{srn}{/exp:dirify}_215.jpg</a>

but the source code gives me this back:

/images/_215.jpg</a>

As you can see there is no srn number being returned.

I think I have implemented Derek’s code in the plug-in correctly:

class Dirify {
    var $return_data;

  function Dirify($str = '')
  {
    global $REGX;
    $this->return_data = strtolower($REGX->create_url_title($str));
  } 

 // ----------------------------------------
  //  Plugin Usage
  // ----------------------------------------

  // This function describes how the plugin is used.
  //  Make sure and use output buffering

  function usage()
  {
  ob_start(); 
  ?>
Dirify allows you to change the characters of a custom field and use them in a url - as url_title does. This will allow one custom field to be used both for an SRN and the file name for a products image.

{exp:dirify} {your_custom_field} {/exp:dirify}

  <?php
  $buffer = ob_get_contents();
    
  ob_end_clean(); 

  return $buffer;
  }
  // END

}

Just below this in the template I am running the same anchor code, but without the dirify, as a check - thats OK - its picking up the correct image values to display the image.

Sorry, Simon, The code I used was just to demonstrate the use of the create_url_title() function, not as complete code. You will still need to use the $TMPL->tagdata to use in a template, otherwise the plugin will only function as a field formatting plugin. The complete function would be:

function Dirify($str = '')
{
    global $REGX, $TMPL;

    if ($str == '')
    {
        $str = $TMPL->tagdata;
    }

    $this->return_data = strtolower($REGX->create_url_title($str));
}

Well, the whole plugin really can consist of three or four lines or so. Let’s see:

<?php $plugin_info = array ('pi_name' => 'Dirify', 'pi_version' => '1.0');
class Dirify { function Dirify() { global $REGX, $TMPL;
$this->return_data = strtolower($REGX->create_url_title($TMPL->fetch_param("input"))); }} ?>

Makes sense? Flesh out as desired. Needs a parameter named “input”, use like so:

{exp:weblog:entries}
{exp:dirify input="{title}"}
{/exp:weblog:entries}

or any other way to provide “input”.

EDIT: If you use Dereks approach, there’s no need for a paramter, but you need to open and close your plugin. Your choice.

Brilliant! Thanks eversomuch guys. I have it working and I opted for Ingmar’s input variation in the end. It is substituting spaces for underscores (as expected because that’s exactly what url_title does) but I am quite happy about that as I have a rename.exe utility somewhere that will allow me to rename the hundreds of images on the site I am rebuilding. This plug-in will make it much easier for the business users to input hundreds of products to the site - one less field to input into.

If anyone else needs this I will fill the forms and send it in but I am not going to claim any sort of authorship on it!

Again many thanks.

To be honest, I don’t think it merits it just yet.

I had a couple of minutes spare today and installed the Replace plug-in and then wrapped it around the dirify call giving me this:

img src="/images/{exp:replace find="_"}{exp:dirify input="{product_number}"}{/exp:replace}_215.jpg" alt="{title}"  width="215" height="215" >

And now I don’t even have to change any of the image names!

Very nice, Simon. Thanks for sharing that! As Victor said, I also hope you’ll submit it to the add-on database, or at the very least to our wiki plugin list =)