Programming | AndrewEnsley.com

WordPress: Embed Youtube Feed With a Simple Shortcode

August 13th, 2010 Andrew 19 comments

WordPress shortcodes are great. They let you perform complex operations or display dynamic content with just a tiny bit of text in any page or post.

I recently needed a way to embed the most recent videos from a Youtube channel (very dynamic information) in a WordPress page, so I decided to write a shortcode for it.

The code is actually pretty simple. Just add the following to your theme’s functions.php file:

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function youtube_feed_shortcode($atts)
{
// Defaults:
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
'user' => 'flamadiddle86', // youtube user
'limit' => 5, // maximum number of videos
'height' => 385, // video height
'width' => 480 // video width
), $atts));
$data = @json_decode(file_get_contents('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/'.$user.'/uploads?alt=json'), TRUE);
$counter = 0;
$content = '<div class="youtubefeed">';
foreach($data['feed']['entry'] as $vid)
{
$url = $vid['media$group']['media$content'][0]['url'];
$title = $vid['title']['$t'];
$ycontent = $vid['content']['$t'];
$content.= '<object width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'">'.
'<param name="movie" value="'.$url.'"></param>'.
'<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>'.
'<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>'.
'<embed src="'.$url.'" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'"></embed></object>'.
'<div class="youtubetitle">'.$title.'</div>'.
'<div class="youtubecontent">'.$ycontent.'</div>'."\n";
$counter++;
if($counter == $limit)
{
break;
}
}
$content .= '</div>';
return $content;
}

add_shortcode('youtubefeed', 'youtube_feed_shortcode');

And it couldn’t be easier to use. The videos you see below were embedded simply by putting this code in the post:

1	[youtubefeed]

PHP: Validate an IP Address

March 13th, 2010 Andrew No comments

So you need to check if some string is a valid IP address. You could simply test it against a regular expression:

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function is_valid_ipv4($ip)
{
return preg_match('/\b(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.'.
'(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.'.
'(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.'.
'(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\b/', $ip) !== 0;
}

Regular Expression obtained here

This will actually work for most situations, but it’s lacking in a few ways. Suppose you want to exclude private or reserved IP addresses. Maybe you want to validate IPv6 addresses too; not just IPv4.

Enter PHP’s Data Filtering Extension. It just works, and you don’t have to worry about maintaining (or properly applying) complex regular expressions.

Google’s Chrome OS – First Impressions

November 20th, 2009 Andrew 3 comments

Yesterday, Google officially announced their new Chrome OS and explained what it will be when it’s released. They also published the source code to allow developers and other interested parties to take a peek. I’m one of those “other interested parties.”
Read more…