Widgets are not made to be called directly. They go into registered sidebars.
If you want to use a widget directly, you’ll probably have to hack it up a bit to make it capable of a direct function call.
it is actually pretty easy.
After toying around for a bit I managed to call a widget from everywhere:
$instance = array("title" => "My Widget", "number" => 9);
$args = array("title" => "My Widget", "before_title" => "<h2>", "after_title" => "</h2>");
$sb = new My_Widget_Class();
$sb->widget($args,$instance);
@naabster – awesome snippet! I’m using it to call widgets from post/pages via shortcodes. The only problem with it is that the $instance[‘number’] doesn’t pass the number to the widget method. But this will work:
$instance = array("title" => "My Widget", "number" => 9);
$args = array("title" => "My Widget", "before_title" => "<h2>", "after_title" => "</h2>");
$sb = new My_Widget_Class();
$sb->number = $instance['number'];
$sb->widget($args,$instance);
When calling a widget from a post/page via shortcode, it’s being output at the top of the post/page. I guess its because the widget method echoes the content instead of returning it by reference. Is there a way to get around it and output widget content in specific place?
P.S. The workaround I came up with is to assign all the HTML within the widget method to a $variable and add a simple condition at the end to check if $instance[‘return’] is true – if yes – it returns the value or else prints it out. The return instance is declared as true in the shortcode function.
Great! Exactly what I was looking for!
That is VERY useful! Glad I found it. Thanks.
I have a problem that may solved by a variation of that code.
In this section of my template:
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('left-side-widgets') ) : ?>
I would like to add something like:
<?php else : ?>
<?php /* alternate sidebar file if no widgets detected in dynamic sidebar */ ?>
<?php endif; ?>
Obviously, I would like to include an alternate file if no widgets exist in that specific dynamic sidebar.
How can I create that “switch”?
I can use:
file_get_contents($someurl);
to grab the file if I must.
Thanks for any help…
_
(@viniciusandre)
Thanks for the snippet!
I’ve ran into this kind of problem:
if (sidebar has widget) –> show sidebar
else –> show some widgets by hand
The results:
Function to verify if sidebar has a widget:
————
function is_sidebar_active($sidebar_id, $force = false){
static $sidebars_widgets;
if($force || !isset($sidebars_widgets)){
$sidebars_widgets = get_option('sidebars_widgets', array());
}
if((int)$sidebar_id) $sidebar_id = sprintf('sidebar-%d', $sidebar_id);
return is_array($sidebars_widgets[$sidebar_id]) && count($sidebars_widgets[$sidebar_id]);
}
Code in sidebar.php:
————
if (is_sidebar_active(1))
dynamic_sidebar('Blogs: Lateral Interna');
else {
widget_perfil();
$args = array (
'title' => '',
'before_widget' => '<li class="widget">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2>',
'after_title' => '</h2>'
);
$instance = array ( 'title' => 'Categorias', 'number' => 1 );
$widget = new WP_Widget_Categories();
$widget->widget($args,$instance);
$args = array ( 'title' => '' );
$instance = array ( 'title' => 'Tweets @revistatitude', 'number' => 1 );
$widget = new WP_Widget_Tweets();
$widget->widget($args,$instance);
}
Hope it helps someone.
