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User:JHodgdon/Function Reference 2.1


NOTE: This has now been moved to Function Reference... but I could not do it as a move....

The files of WordPress define many useful PHP functions. Some of the functions, known as Template Tags, are defined especially for use in WordPress themes. There are also some functions related to actions and filters (the Plugin API), which are therefore used primarily for developing plugins. The rest are used to create the core WordPress functionality.

Many of the core WordPress functions may also be useful to plugin developers, and to a lesser extent, possibly theme developers as well. So, this article lists most of the core functions, by category; some of the function names are also links to more detailed documentation in separate pages. Each category also lists the files where its functions can be found (the files are in the wp-includes directory of WordPress).

Note: This reference applies to Version 2.1 of WordPress, and does not include functions that have been deprecated as of that version of WordPress. An incomplete page for the 2.0.x versions of WordPress can be found at Function Reference 2.0.x.

Note: Functions specifically for templates, which are listed in the Template Tags article, and contained in files wp-includes/*_template.php, are not listed here.

You can help make this page more complete!

Here are some things you can do to help:

  • Add documentation to un-documented functions, by creating sub-pages or at least by adding short comments in the lists below. If you create a subpage for a function, please include information and examples of usage of that function, if possible, per the examples found in Template Tags.
  • List more functions here, following the category structure.
  • Remove functions from the list, if you think they could not possibly be useful to plugin developers, or if they have been deprecated.
  • Correct errors by moving functions to better categories where appropriate, and of course fixing typos. Note that it is OK for a function to appear in more than one category.

Read Contributing to WordPress to find out more about how you can contribute to the effort!


Functions by category

Post, Page, and Attachment Functions

These functions are contained in formatting.php, post.php. See also Template Functions.

  • wp_trim_excerpt
  • get_attached_file
  • update_attached_file
  • get_children
  • get_extended
  • get_post - get information on a specific post
  • get_post_mime_type($ID = "") - takes a post ID, returns its MIME type
  • get_post_status
  • get_post_type
  • get_posts
  • add_post_meta
  • delete_post_meta
  • get_post_meta
  • update_post_meta
  • get_post_custom
  • get_post_custom_keys
  • get_post_custom_values
  • wp_delete_post($postid) - A generic function to delete a post in the post table
  • get_post_categories
  • get_recent_posts
  • get_single_post
  • wp_insert_post($postarr=array()) - A generic function for inserting data into the post table
  • wp_update_post($postarr=array()) - A generic function to update data in the post table
  • wp_publish_post($post_id) - Set a post's post_status to published. Calls wp_update_post.
  • wp_set_post_categories
  • get_all_page_ids
  • get_page
  • get_page_by_path
  • get_page_by_title
  • get_page_children
  • get_page_hierarchy
  • get_page_uri
  • get_pages
  • generate_page_uri_index
  • is_local_attachment
  • wp_insert_attachment
  • wp_delete_attachment
  • wp_get_attachment_metadata
  • wp_update_attachment_metadata
  • wp_get_attachment_url
  • wp_get_attachment_thumb_file
  • wp_get_attachment_thumb_url
  • wp_attachment_is_image
  • wp_mime_type_icon
  • wp_check_for_changed_slugs

Category Functions

These functions are contained in category.php. See also Template Functions.

User and Author Functions

These functions are in user.php, pluggable.php, registration.php. See also Template Functions.

  • get_profile
  • get_usernumposts — get post count for a specific user
  • delete_usermeta
  • get_usermeta — get meta data for a specific user
  • update_usermeta
  • set_current_user
  • wp_set_current_user
  • wp_get_current_user
  • get_currentuserinfo — get information on the current user
  • get_userdata — get information on any user
  • get_userdatabylogin
  • wp_login
  • is_user_logged_in
  • auth_redirect
  • username_exists
  • email_exists
  • validate_username
  • wp_insert_user
  • wp_update_user
  • wp_create_user — Create a user and add it to the user database.

Feed Functions

These functions are in functions.php, feed.php, rss.php

  • fetch_rss -- retrieve an RSS feed from a URL with automatic caching (included in rss_functions.php)
  • wp_rss -- retrieve and display an RSS feed as an unordered list (included in rss_functions.php)
  • get_rss -- retrieve and display an RSS feed as a list (ordering optional) (included in rss_functions.php)
  • do_feed
  • do_feed_rdf
  • do_feed_rss
  • do_feed_rss2
  • do_feed_atom
  • get_bloginfo_rss
  • bloginfo_rss
  • get_the_title_rss
  • the_title_rss
  • the_content_rss
  • the_excerpt_rss
  • permalink_single_rss
  • comment_link
  • get_comment_author_rss
  • comment_author_rss
  • comment_text_rss
  • comments_rss_link
  • comments_rss
  • get_author_rss_link
  • get_category_rss_link
  • get_the_category_rss
  • the_category_rss
  • rss_enclosure

Comment, Ping, and Trackback Functions

These functions are found in comment.php, functions.php, post.php. See also Template Functions.

  • check_comment
  • get_approved_comments
  • get_comment
  • get_lastcommentmodified
  • sanitize_comment_cookies
  • wp_allow_comment
  • wp_delete_comment
  • wp_get_comment_status
  • wp_get_current_commenter
  • wp_insert_comment
  • wp_filter_comment
  • wp_throttle_comment_flood
  • wp_new_comment
  • wp_set_comment_status
  • wp_update_comment
  • wp_update_comment_count
  • discover_pingback_server_uri
  • do_all_pings
  • do_trackbacks
  • generic_ping
  • pingback
  • privacy_ping_filter
  • trackback
  • weblog_ping
  • do_enclose
  • add_ping
  • get_enclosed
  • get_pung
  • get_to_ping
  • trackback_url_list

Action, Filter, and Plugin Functions

These functions are contained in plugin.php. See also Plugin API.

  • add_filter
  • apply_filters
  • merge_filters
  • remove_filter
  • add_action
  • do_action
  • did_action
  • do_action_ref_array
  • remove_action
  • plugin_basename
  • register_activation_hook
  • register_deactivation_hook

Theme-Related Functions

These functions are found in theme.php.

  • get_stylesheet
  • get_stylesheet_directory
  • get_stylesheet_directory_uri
  • get_stylesheet_uri
  • get_locale_stylesheet_uri
  • get_template
  • get_template_directory
  • get_template_directory_uri
  • get_theme_data
  • get_themes
  • get_theme
  • get_current_theme
  • get_theme_root
  • get_theme_root_uri
  • get_query_template
  • get_404_template
  • get_archive_template
  • get_author_template
  • get_category_template
  • get_date_template
  • get_home_template
  • get_page_template
  • get_paged_template
  • get_search_template
  • get_single_template
  • get_attachment_template
  • get_comments_popup_template
  • load_template
  • locale_stylesheet
  • validate_current_theme
  • get_theme_mod
  • set_theme_mod
  • get_header_textcolor
  • get_header_image
  • header_image
  • add_custom_image_header


Formatting Functions

These functions are contained in formatting.php, functions.php, kses.php.

  • wptexturize( $text )
  • clean_pre( $text ) - Returns the text without BR tags, and with P tags turned into line-breaks
  • wpautop( $pee, $br = 1 ) - Returns the text with HTML formatting for paragraphs
  • seems_utf8($Str) - Returns true if given string seems like it is UTF8-encoded
  • wp_specialchars( $text, $quotes = 0 ) - Like the PHP function htmlspecialchars except it doesn't double-encode HTML entities
  • utf8_uri_encode
  • remove_accents($string) - Returns a string with accents or umlauts without these
  • sanitize_file_name
  • sanitize_user( $username, $strict = false ) - Makes the username more machine-readable. Strict option for pure ASCII only.
  • sanitize_title($title, $fallback_title = )
  • sanitize_title_with_dashes($title)
  • convert_chars($content, $flag = 'obsolete') - Translation of invalid Unicode references range to valid range
  • funky_javascript_fix
  • balanceTags($text, $is_comment = 0) - Balances Tags of string using a modified stack. Can be disabled by configuration.
  • force_balance_tags
  • format_to_edit
  • format_to_post
  • zeroise($number,$threshold) - Adds leading zeros when necessary
  • backslashit
  • trailingslashit
  • addslashes_gpc
  • stripslashes_deep
  • antispambot - converts email address to anti-spam version
  • make_clickable
  • wp_rel_nofollow
  • convert_smilies
  • is_email
  • wp_iso_descrambler
  • popuplinks - converts a link into a popup link that will open in a different window
  • sanitize_email
  • ent2ncr($text) - Returns HTML entity as its number representation.
  • wp_richedit_pre
  • clean_url
  • htmlentities2
  • js_escape
  • attribute_escape
  • wp_make_link_relative - makes an absolute link into a relative link
  • add_magic_quotes
  • wp_kses
  • wp_kses_hook
  • wp_kses_version
  • wp_kses_split
  • wp_kses_split2
  • wp_kses_attr
  • wp_kses_hair
  • wp_kses_check_attr_val
  • wp_kses_bad_protocol
  • wp_kses_no_null
  • wp_kses_strip_slashes
  • wp_kses_array_lc
  • wp_kses_js_entities
  • wp_kses_html_error
  • wp_kses_bad_protocol_once
  • wp_kses_bad_protocol_once2
  • wp_kses_normalize_entities
  • wp_kses_normalize_entities2
  • wp_kses_decode_entities
  • wp_filter_kses
  • wp_filter_post_kses
  • wp_filter_nohtml_kses

Miscellanous Functions

These functions are contained in formatting.php, functions.php, bookmarks.php, cron.php, l10n.php, user.php, pluggable.php

Time/Date Functions

  • get_gmt_from_date
  • get_date_from_gmt
  • iso8601_timezone_to_offset
  • iso8601_to_datetime
  • human_time_diff
  • mysql2date
  • current_time
  • date_i18n
  • get_weekendstartend
  • get_lastpostdate
  • get_lastpostmodified
  • is_new_day

Serialization

  • maybe_serialize
  • maybe_unserialize
  • is_serialized
  • is_serialized_string

Options

  • get_option
  • form_option -- like get_option, but removes attributes from result</tt>
  • get_alloptions
  • update_option -- given option name and new value, it makes a safe update of given option's database row.
  • add_option
  • delete_option -- removes row of given option name from the options database table.
  • get_user_option
  • update_user_option

XMLRPC

  • xmlrpc_getposttitle
  • xmlrpc_getpostcategory
  • xmlrpc_removepostdata
  • user_pass_ok

Localization

See also Translating WordPress.

  • get_locale
  • __
  • _e
  • _ngettext
  • load_textdomain
  • load_default_textdomain
  • load_plugin_textdomain
  • load_theme_textdomain

Cron (Scheduling)

  • wp_schedule_single_event
  • wp_schedule_event
  • wp_reschedule_event
  • wp_unschedule_event
  • wp_clear_scheduled_hook
  • wp_next_scheduled
  • spawn_cron
  • wp_cron
  • wp_get_schedules
  • wp_get_schedule

Miscellaneous

  • gzip_compression
  • make_url_footnote
  • wp_get_http_headers
  • add_query_arg
  • remove_query_arg
  • wp_remote_fopen
  • wp
  • status_header
  • nocache_headers
  • cache_javascript_headers
  • get_num_queries
  • bool_from_yn - converts a "Y/N" variable into boolean true/false
  • do_robots
  • is_blog_installed
  • wp_nonce_url
  • wp_nonce_field
  • wp_referer_field
  • wp_original_referer_field
  • wp_get_referer
  • wp_get_original_referer
  • wp_mkdir_p
  • wp_upload_dir
  • wp_upload_bits
  • wp_check_filetype
  • wp_explain_nonce
  • wp_nonce_ays
  • wp_die
  • get_bookmark
  • get_bookmarks
  • wp_mail
  • check_admin_referer
  • check_ajax_referer
  • wp_redirect
  • wp_get_cookie_login
  • wp_setcookie
  • wp_clearcookie
  • wp_notify_postauthor
  • wp_notify_moderator
  • wp_new_user_notification
  • wp_verify_nonce
  • wp_create_nonce
  • wp_salt
  • wp_hash

Classes

The following classes were created by WordPress developers, and are found in files capabilities.php, classes.php, class-snoopy.php, locale.php, query.php, rewrite.php, script-loader.php, wp-db.php:

  • WP - general request handling
  • WP_Ajax_Response - AJAX handling
  • WP_Object_Cache (formerly WP_Cache) - Object cache (and functions wp_cache_add, wp_cache_close, wp_cache_delete, wp_cache_flush, wp_cache_get, wp_cache_init, wp_cache_replace, wp_cache_set)
  • WP_Error - error handling (and function is_wp_error)
  • WP_Locale - handles date and time locales
  • WP_Query - Request parsing and manipulation, posts fetching (with functions get_query_var, query_posts, have_posts, in_the_loop, rewind_posts, the_post, wp_old_slug_redirect, setup_postdata, as well as the Conditional Tags is_*)
  • WP_Rewrite - Rewrite rules (and functions add_rewrite_rule, add_rewrite_tag, add_feed, add_rewrite_endpoint, url_to_postid)
  • WP_Roles, WP_Role, WP_User - Users and capabilities (and functions map_meta_cap, current_user_can, get_role, add_role, remove_role)
  • WP_Scripts - JavaScript loading (and functions wp_print_scripts, wp_register_script, wp_deregister_script, wp_enqueue_script)
  • Walker, Walker_Page, Walker_PageDropdown, Walker_Category, Walker_CategoryDropdown - Display tree-like data
  • wpdb - Database interface

The following classes were created by outside developers, and are found in files class-IXR.php, class-pop3.php, class-snoopy.php, gettext.php, rss.php, streams.php:

  • IXR - XML-RPC Classes, including IXR_Value, IXR_Message, IXR_Server, IXR_IntrospectionServer, IXR_Request, IXR_Client, IXR_ClientMulticall, IXR_Error, IXR_Date, IXR_Base64
  • Snoopy - HTTP client
  • gettext_reader (part of PHP-gettext) - Localization Class
  • RSS Classes (MagpieRSS and RSSCache) (and functions fetch_rss, is_info, is_success, is_redirect, is_error, is_client_error, is_server_error, parse_w3cdtf, wp_rss, get_rss)
  • POP3: SquirrelMail wrapper
  • StreamReader, StringReader, FileReader, CachedFileReader