PHP is annoying
I wanted to randomize the header image for the gaming
subcategory…talk about a pain in the neck! PHP seems to be pretty
robust, but the syntax is quite different than either Python or C
which I am used to. I had to change a few things, first up -
category.php; I went from
get_header();
to
<?php
if ( is_category( 'Gaming' ) ) :
get_header( 'gaming' );
elseif ( is_404() ) :
get_header( '404' );
else :
get_header();
endif;
?>
Apparently there are different methods of doing this with curly
brackets, but this was the cleanest example I could find and it
resembles python. It basically says to use header-gaming.php if the
category matches “Gaming”. Next up was that file, which I just made a
copy of header.php. I added this relavant code:
<?php
$url = content_url();
$img0 = $url . "/uploads/2013/06/cropped-ORIGINAL.jpg";
$img1 = $url . "/uploads/2013/06/cropped-KUNARK.jpg";
$img2 = $url . "/uploads/2013/06/cropped-VELIOUS.jpg";
$img3 = $url .
"/uploads/2013/06/cropped-arma3_e32013_screenshot_06-100041641-orig1.png";
$imgarray = array($img0,$img1,$img2,$img3);
$cnt = count($imgarray);
$rn = rand(1,$cnt-1);
$img = $imgarray[$rn];
//echo "selecting image " . $rn . " out of " . $cnt;
?>
This was a pain. The first line assigns the variable $url to the
wordpress content directory as this is where the header images are
currently stored. The next 4 lines combine that directory with the
remaining image path. Next I add all of these images to an array
called imgarray. I can then count how large that array is, generate a
random number, then assign $img using the random number as an index
for the $imgarray. Next is the HTML part that actually places the
image:
<img src="<?php echo $img; ?>"...
which is pretty straight forward.
Next up: scanning a directory for a list of images and automatically adding them to an array as to make this process automatic. This will allow me to randomize each page with pretty pictures. Start with these stack overflow suggestions.
