Dynamically filter WordPress posts with dropdown menu (using php and ajax)

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1. Almost 1000 views and not a single comment. Well, I also needed this and decided to make it. I’ve shared the JavaScript and WordPress code below for people in the distant future to use. It looks like a lot, but that’s because I’ve defined some jQuery functions you can use later with .extend. All it’s doing is looking for a select element (a dropdown) with CSS class .content-filter.

   Once found, it uses the dropdown’s id to set a GET variable to the value currently selected, then it redirects to this the same URL and adds these GET variables. For example, if the id of the dropdown was product_filter, and this had a value set to date, then it would set the GET variable product_filter=date. It’s great because it doesn’t care about your Wordpess details – all it cares about is the select element.

   // A bunch of helper methods for reading GET variables etc from the URL
   jQuery.extend({
       urlGetVars : function() {
           var GET = {};
           var tempGET = location.search;
           tempGET = tempGET.replace('?', '').split('&');
           for(var i in tempGET) {
               var someVar = tempGET[i].split('=');
               if (someVar.length == 2) {
                   GET[someVar[0]] = someVar[1];
               }
           }
           return GET;
       },
       urlGetVar : function(name) {
           return $.urlGetVars()[name];
       },
       serializeUrlVars : function(obj) {
           var str = [];
           for(var p in obj)
            str.push(encodeURIComponent(p) + "=" + encodeURIComponent(obj[p]));
           return str.join("&");
       },
       currentUrl : function() {
           return window.location.href.slice(0,window.location.href.indexOf('?'));
       }
   });
   
   // Adds functionality to filter content using a dropdown
   var ContentFilter = function ($) {
       $(document).ready(function() {
           // Return to a scroll position if exists
           var scroll = $.urlGetVar('scroll');
           if (typeof scroll != 'undefined') {
               $(window).scrollTop(scroll);
           }
           // Prepare the filter dropdowns
           $('.content-filter').each(function(){
               var me = $(this);
               // e.g. content-filter-product
               var id = me.attr('id');
               // Refresh with selected filter on change
               var refresh = function() {
                   var GET = $.urlGetVars();
                   GET[id] = me.val();
                   // Save scroll position, return to this position on load
                   GET['scroll'] = $(window).scrollTop();
                   var newVar = $.currentUrl() + '?' + $.serializeUrlVars(GET);
                   window.location = newVar;
               };
               me.change(refresh);
           });
       });
   }(jQuery);
   

   Now the WordPress code. All we really need is to generate the select with some kind of id and set the class to .content-filter. This code asks for a post type like ‘post’ or ‘product’ and makes the select element. It then returns the GET variable for convenience, and if none is set then it defaults to ‘newest’. Notice that the $fields array sets all the different orderby values you’d like to support. You can always access it anywhere in the template with $_GET['product_filter'] or $_GET['post_filter'] depending on what your type is. This means that only one can exist on any given page, but you want that – otherwise jQuery won’t know which to use. You can extend this code to set a custom id or anything you like later.

   function ak_content_filter($post_type_id = 'post', &$filter_get_value, $echo = TRUE) {
       $dropdown = '<div class="content-filter-wrapper">';
       // The dropdown filter id for this post type
       $filter_id = $post_type_id.'_filter';
       // The actual dropdown
       $dropdown .= '<label for="'. $filter_id .'">Filter</label><select id="'. $filter_id .'" class="content-filter" name="'. $filter_id .'">';
       // The available ways of filtering, to sort you'd need to set that in the WP_Query later
       $fields = array('date' => 'Newest', 'comment_count' => 'Most Popular', 'rand' => 'Random');
       $filter_get_value = isset($_GET[$filter_id]) ? $_GET[$filter_id] : 'newest'; // default is 'newest'
       foreach ($fields as $field_value=>$field_name) {
           $dropdown .= '<option value="'. $field_value .'" '. selected($field_value, $filter_get_value, FALSE) .'>'. $field_name .'</option>';
       }
       $dropdown .= '</select></div>';
       // Print or return
       if ($echo) {
           echo $dropdown;
       } else {
           return $dropdown;
       }
   }
   

   Now the fun part – putting it together in the content page. All our work pays off with some sweet and short code:

   // This will fill $product_filter with $_GET['product_filter'] or 'newest' if it doesn't exist
   ak_content_filter('product', $product_filter);
   $args = array('post_type' => 'product', 'orderby' => $product_filter);
   // This is just an example, you can use get_pages or whatever supports orderby
   $loop = new WP_Query( $args );
   
   // OR, to avoid printing:
   $dropdown = ak_content_filter('product', $product_filter, FALSE);
   // ... some code ...
   echo $dropdown;
   

   I used the custom post type ‘product’, but if you’re using ‘post’ just replace that. Someone should probably make this into a plugin if they haven’t already 😛

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