Dynamically Generate WordPress Shortcodes

I’m wondering if there is a more efficient way to write this, using a while loop or something. Essentially, I want to dynamically generate a number of WordPress shortcodes.

# Span 1
add_shortcode('span-1', 'span1');
function span1($atts, $content = null) {
    return generateSpan(1, $content);
}

# Span 2
add_shortcode('span-2', 'span2');
function span2($atts, $content = null) {
    return generateSpan(2, $content);
}

// ... repeating as many times as necessary

I tried this, but it didn’t seem to work:

$i = 1;
while ($i < 12) {

    $functionName = 'span' . $i;
    $shortcodeName = 'span-' . $i;

    add_shortcode($shortcodeName, $functionName);
    $$functionName = function($atts, $content = null) {
        return generateSpan($i, $content);
    };

    $i++;

}

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2 comments

  1. I know it doesn’t answers the “dynamically generate” issue, but, alternatively, you could use the attributes for that: [span cols="1"] -> [span cols="12"].

    add_shortcode('span', 'span_shortcode');
    
    function span_shortcode( $atts, $content = null ) 
    {
        if( isset( $atts['cols'] ) )
        {
           return generateSpan( $atts['cols'], $content );
        }  
    }
    

    And the third parameter of the callback can be used to detect the current shortcode:

    for( $i=1; $i<13; $i++ )
        add_shortcode( "span-$i", 'span_so_17473011' );
    
    function span_so_17473011( $atts, $content = null, $shortcode ) 
    {
        $current = str_replace( 'span-', '', $shortcode ); // Will get $i value
        return generateSpan( $current, $content );
    }
    

    Reference: current_shortcode() – detect currently used shortcode

  2. You should be able to do this:

    <?php
    
    $scName = 'span-';
    
    for($i = 0; $i < 12; $i++)
    {
        add_shortcode($scName . $i, function($atts, $content = null){
            return generateSpan($i, $content);
        });
    }
    
    ?>