How to get specific string in explode array?

Question

I have a shortcode where I'm trying to get a specific string from the $args array below.

Query:

$args = array( //'post_type' => $posttype, 'post_type' => explode( ', ', $posttype ), ); $myquery = new WP_Query( $args ); 

Conditional:

if ( $posttype == 'cpt_press' ) : the_content(); else : the_excerpt(); endif; 

Shortcode:

[myquery posttype='cpt_press'] 

In the conditional above, I'm able to retrieve all posts with post type 'cpt_press' if I don't use explode. The reason I used explode is so I could do this:

[myquery posttype='cpt_press, cpt_two, cpt_three, cpt_etc'] 

Any help?

UPDATED CODE BLOCK

function myshortcode( $params, $content = null ) { global $post; extract( shortcode_atts( array( 'posttype' => '', 'meta_key' => '', 'priority' => '', 'meta_compare' => '', 'layout' => 'rows', 'cols' => 1, 'tag' => '', 'count' => 10, 'orderby' => 'date', 'order' => 'DESC' ), $params ) ); $args = array( 'post_type' => explode( ',', $posttype ), ); $myquery = new WP_Query( $args ); ob_start(); ?><div class="row"><?php // The Loop if ( $myquery->have_posts() ) : while( $myquery->have_posts() ) : $myquery->the_post(); if ( $posttype == 'cpt_press' ) : the_content(); else : the_excerpt(); endif; endwhile; endif; wp_reset_postdata(); ?></div><?php return ob_get_clean(); } add_shortcode( 'myquery', 'myshortcode' ); 

Answer 1

I see two problems here. One is that the explode() doesn't actually specify the correct split string, which is ', ', WITH a space.

What is written in the sample:

'post_type' => explode( ',', $posttype ), 

What is written in the example shortcode:

[myquery posttype='cpt_press, cpt_two, cpt_three, cpt_etc'] 

Note that there is a comma AND a space between each post type. I would use preg_split() instead to allow for some flexibility in the way this value could be written in the shortcode:

'post_type' => preg_split( '/\s*,\s*/', $posttype ), 

This will allow any amount of white-space to be used on either side of each comma between the post types in the given list string.

The second problem I see is that the given code is testing the $posttype variable for equality to ''cpt_press'`, even though it could be a comma-separated list.

Instead, check for membership of 'cpt_press' in the $args['post_type'], array, which will set to the list of the post types given in the posttype shortcode argument:

in_array( 'cpt_press', $args['post_type'] ) 

The updated code would thus be:

function myshortcode( $params, $content = null ) { global $post; extract( shortcode_atts( array( 'posttype' => '', 'meta_key' => '', 'priority' => '', 'meta_compare' => '', 'layout' => 'rows', 'cols' => 1, 'tag' => '', 'count' => 10, 'orderby' => 'date', 'order' => 'DESC' ), $params ) ); $args = array( 'post_type' => preg_split( '/\s*,\s*/', $posttype ), ); $myquery = new WP_Query( $args ); ob_start(); ?><div class="row"><?php // The Loop if ( $myquery->have_posts() ) : while( $myquery->have_posts() ) : $myquery->the_post(); if ( in_array( 'cpt_press', $args['post_type'] ) ) : the_content(); else : the_excerpt(); endif; endwhile; endif; wp_reset_postdata(); ?></div><?php return ob_get_clean(); } add_shortcode( 'myquery', 'myshortcode' );