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up vote 0 down vote favorite

I store post IDs in an array. I would like to loop through the array and display the IDs within a <div> containing <p> and <ul> tags, but only when at least one ID is in the array. If the array is empty no html can be returned. This implies that I should use some kind of if statement before the loop. Needless to say, my php skills are pretty basic and after two days of trying hard I am getting nowhere. Grateful for help!

My code (using Wordpress)

$postids = array();

...

$postids [] = $post->ID; //stores the post IDs in the array

Here is an update. I apologize for posting all this code as its quite messy with many things going on. It's the second loop of three (or more). The IDs displayed in a near identical first loop have been passed on. Only those IDs which have not been retrieved by the previous loop are displayed in order not to show any duplicate posts.

I have tried to remove all html markup and query the $postids with a new WP_Query after but that retrieves all posts I have ever created. I am pretty sure that's the right way to continue although I am obviously doing something wrong.

<?php
$tags = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);
if ($tags) {
  $first_tag = $tags[1]->term_id;
  $args=array(
    'tag__in' => array($first_tag),
    'post__not_in' => array($post->ID),
    'showposts'=>5, //Display this number of related posts
    'ignore_sticky_posts'=>1
   );
  $postids = array();
  $my_query = new WP_Query($args);
  if( $my_query->have_posts() ) {
      echo '<ul id="relatedposts">'; 
      while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); if (!in_array($post->ID, $ids)) {; $postids [] = $post->ID; ?>
      <li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
      <?php }
    $ids[]= $post->ID; 
    endwhile;
  }
}
?>
      </ul>
<?php if ($postids){ //$postids has at least one value set
    echo '<div>Related posts</div>'; //Outputting the header text. This works! If there are no IDs in the array nothing is shown.
     }; 
?>
share|improve this question
    
what have you tried? –  Dagon Feb 19 '12 at 19:41
    
Basically I have tried to figure out how to loop the array with the following <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> <div><p>header text</p> <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> do stuff... <!--get the permalink, title etc...--> <?php endwhile; ?> </div> <?php endif; ?> Without any luck though! –  sarytash Feb 19 '12 at 19:47

4 Answers 4

up vote 2 down vote accepted

This should work:

 <?php

 // assuming you have an array of ids called $postids

 if(count($postids)){
    echo "<div><ul>";
    foreach($postids as $id){
       echo "<li>$id</li>";
    }
    echo "</ul></div>";
 }


 ?>

To break it down:

if(count($ids)){

count() returns the number of elements in the array $ids. Any number other than zero will evaluate to true and enter the if statement, zero will evaluate to false and the whole thing will be skipped.

 foreach($ids as $id){

This loops through each element in the array $ids and assigns it to the variable $id. Hopefully the echo statements are self explanatory.

share|improve this answer
    
Thank you for your help. I reckon I must be doing something wrong. No matter what I do with your code it returns three rows. The first row says "123", the second row "456" and the third row: "789". Is $ids = $postids? –  sarytash Feb 19 '12 at 22:53
    
Oh, yeah, sorry, you have to replace the $ids array with your array of ids. I'll update the post to reflect that. –  Gordon Bailey Feb 19 '12 at 23:05
    
Thank you Gordon! Looks promising, I will test this and update you later. –  sarytash Feb 20 '12 at 0:24
    
My problem is now solved. I must wait another hour to self-answer with the working solution. Your code did the trick Gordon, thanks a lot! –  sarytash Feb 20 '12 at 2:07
    
Great, glad I could help! Happy coding :) –  Gordon Bailey Feb 20 '12 at 5:21
up vote 0 down vote

Thanks to the great help by Gordon, I now have a working solution. All html is removed from the messy original code above. The following if statement and foreach loop echoes out the html in a simple and convenient way. Styling the and tags is now very straightforward.

<?php
  if(count($postids)){
    echo "<div>Related posts<ul>";
    foreach($postids as $id){
       echo '<li><a href="'.get_permalink( $id ).'">'.get_the_title( $id ).'</a></li>';
    }
    echo "</ul></div>";
  }
?>
share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

Mayhaps something like this? You should customize this code to retrieve the contents of the posts, or whatever you'd like to do.

<?php
$postIds = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
?>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Post IDs!</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Post IDs!</h1>
<?php if(empty($postIds)): ?>
    <p>There are no post IDs :(</p>
<?php else: ?>
    <ul>
<?php foreach($postIds as $postId): ?>
        <li><?php echo $postId; ?></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
    </ul>
<?php endif; ?>
</body>
</html>
share|improve this answer
    
Thank you Vague! I got two suggestions to work with which helped me to solved the problem. Your suggestion looks to be along the lines of Gordon's solution. –  sarytash Feb 20 '12 at 2:13
up vote 1 down vote

There are a couple of ways to do it.

if ($postids){ //$postids is TRUE (ie $postids is not an empty array)
     //do your output
}

OR

if(count($postids) > 0){ //$postids has at least one value set
    //do your output
}

Getting used to simple tests of true and !false is your friend

share|improve this answer
    
Thank you. Your suggestion works great but the problem is I loop through the array before I can execute the if condition. If I put this in my loop it will output the <div> for every post retrieved in the loop. The <div> is for header text and to be able to style the header as I like. Outputting the header after a <ul> containing the posts looks pretty hopeless and at best would work with some ugly positional css hacks. I'll try to update my question and include my code, hopefully it will make more sense. –  sarytash Feb 19 '12 at 23:36
    
Thank you Fred! Gordon's solution worked right out of the box. I bet yours would have solved my problem as well, only if my skills were better to work out the final step. –  sarytash Feb 20 '12 at 2:10

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