guff

hi, i think there’s an error in your code, the update of the options in the control fuction if the options don’t match the newoptions should only be done if the form was submitted, else the options get always updated with empty values – at least that’s what happens on my site!

cheers,
/jan

Hi Kaf,
Many thanks for the excellent example. With it I was able to knock together my own widget in about 30 minutes!

–
J

Thanks for the good work!

You need to put the update_option inside the submit section or else whenever you load the widget page it erases all your widget setting.

Cool, thanks for posting this. It has been a big help in my widget adventures.

Code for the option update should look like this:

// This is for handing the control form submission.
if ( $_POST['evterm-submit'] ) {
// Clean up control form submission options
$newoptions['title'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['evterm-title']));

// If original widget options do not match control form
// submission options, update them.
if ( $options != $newoptions ) {
$options = $newoptions;
update_option('widget_evterm', $options);
}
}

Bye Stefan

Thank you very much for this! Maybe I can get figured out now.

~ Diane Clancy
http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog

Thanks much for this sample but like others have mentioned there are problems with the widget info disappearing when reloading the widgets page. I believe I’ve found a simple solution for this – I just checkout some other stock widget code to see what they had in the submit section and here is what I got:

Your code:
// Collect our widget’s options.
$options = get_option(‘widget_mywidget’);

// This is for handing the control form submission.
if ( $_POST['mywidget-submit'] ) {
// Clean up control form submission options
$newoptions['title'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['mywidget-title']));
$newoptions['text'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['mywidget-text']));
}

New code that will ensure saved options are loaded:
// Collect our widget’s options.
$options = $newoptions = get_option(‘widget_artistofthemonth’);

// This is for handing the control form submission.
if ( $_POST['mywidget-submit'] ) {
// Clean up control form submission options
$newoptions['title'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['mywidget-title']));
$newoptions['text'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['mywidget-text']));
}

The only change is in the ‘Collect our widgets options’ section. It looks like all that was needed was to make $options and $newoptions to equal the options currently stored for the widget.

Thanks again though for the sample. Now that I’ve got it working it’s very nice…

OMG! thanks Jonah! I made my first widget based on this code and although it worked like I wanted (finally!) , it would lose the options when I reloaded the widgets page. aha! the end of hours of head scratching!

This plugin is not working for wordpress 2.3 beta 2. I can’t figure out why though. It’s not retaining the saved options :-)

i love this tool in my wp-blog. its realy simple to handle this one.

Thank you so much for a simple example! I was having a very hard time finding a simple example that I could build on.

I just want to echo Tony’s comment. Thanks very much for the easy-to-follow example, and well-commented code. Makes it a snap for a relative beginner to pick up.

Thanks for a great example. I too had the problem with options being lost when the widget admin page was loaded. The problem is that options are saved even when there has been no submission. The code that checks for changed settings should be in the block that is called when the form is submitted.

Change this:

// This is for handing the control form submission.
if ( $_POST['mywidget-submit'] ) {
    // Clean up control form submission options
    $newoptions['title'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['mywidget-title']));
    $newoptions['text'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['mywidget-text']));
}

// If original widget options do not match control form
// submission options, update them.
if ( $options != $newoptions ) {
    $options = $newoptions;
    update_option('widget_mywidget', $options);
}


To this:

// This is for handing the control form submission.
if ( $_POST['mywidget-submit'] ) {
    // Clean up control form submission options
    $newoptions['title'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['mywidget-title']));
    $newoptions['text'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['mywidget-text']));

Dear all,

I am searching a widget that can do this: for-single-category draw an area with the latest post with icon-image and a n char of text + “more…” link. Under this main for-single-category news, the list of other news with title and link.

Variable width to fit the sidebar, 2 config options (selected from a drop-down menu the existing category; select the number of chars to show; the number of latest title post for that category to show).

Any tips? Name? Link?

Thank you in advance (please, answer me by mail)

Works great and the comments helped me a lot. First widget (and it’s even working!) created in less then an hour.

Thanks a lot,
Jens

PS: John Hunters solution should be really included in the original code ;)

Thanks, I am currently developing a plugin and I’d like the add a widget. This helps me get started easily.

Thank you for this tutorial, it helped me get started quickly!

This is a very helpful tutorial. I’ve been able to do some interesting things with it after just a couple of hours.

But one thing I hope you can help with. Is it possible to put a widget like this on to the Dashboard? There are some plugins to manage Dashboard widgets, but they don’t work with 2.7.

I’ve been looking around to find how the widgets get put into the pull-down box where you can check which ones should be displayed. But I can’t find that either.

Any help?

Thanks a lot! The source code was very helpful!