WordPress/Codeigniter Integration - Pass WP shortcode attribute to CI script

Question

I have successfully integrated WordPress with Codeigniter. I have created a plugin that adds a shortcode that can be used in the editor. This also works as expected. Here is my code:

function get_property_filters($atts) { foreach ($atts as $key => $value) { $_POST['property_type'] = $value; } return 'Something to replace shortcode in WP Page'; } add_shortcode('property_filters', 'get_property_filters');

What I need to do is send a POST variable from my WP plugin to a CI script, hence the line:

$_POST['property_type'] = $value;

I understand that the return value of the function that handles the shortcode is meant to replace the shortcode with some text or widget, etc in the Page/Post. I plan to replace the shortcode with an empty string. But, within the function that handles the shortcode, how can I send a POST variable to my Codeigniter script?

I have searched for hours on this. It seems to be a very specific question. Your help is appreciated.

EDIT: I had a thought about using session variables to save the value, but it doesn't seem like I can set a session variable in WP and access it from CI. Any suggestions along this line of thought?

EDIT 2: I also had the idea to query the WP database from the CI script using $wpdb. It is possible to do this and already works in some scenarios, however, I cannot get the post_content field directly from the WP database, instead I get the rendered text. i.e. My shortcode is replaced with the word "land", but I want the query to return the shortcode that was used in the WP page, not the replacement string.

Answer 1

If you want to send a POST data directly into a CodeIgniter script, you can use PHP's cURL library (make sure it is installed in your web server).

Important: First you will need to disable CodeIgniter's CSRF check. You could disable from the entire framework, or you could create a pre-system hook to disable CSRF in a specific controller.

Here is an example of a cURL request in your WP script:

$value = "POST VALUE";
$post_data = array();
$post_data["property_type"] = $value;
$codeigniter_url = "http://example.com/codeigniter/handle_post";

$post = curl_init();

curl_setopt($post, CURLOPT_URL, $codeigniter_url); //The URL to send the request
curl_setopt($post, CURLOPT_POST, count($post_data)); //Amount of POST fields
curl_setopt($post, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data); //The POST data.
curl_setopt($post, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE); //Returns the output from the requested script
curl_setopt($post, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE); //Do not verify the SSL certificate.

//The variable below will have the output from your Controller function in CodeIgniter.
$result = trim(curl_exec($post));

//The variable below will have any possible errors from the cURL request.
$errors = trim(curl_error($post));

//Now you can work with the $result variable which contains the results from your CI
//Controller.

Then, you can create your controller to handle your post request in CodeIgniter:

class Handle_post extends CI_Controller {
    public function index()
    {
        $property_type = $this->input->post("property_type");
        //Your actions here...

        echo "RESULT FROM THE CONTROLLER IN CODEIGNITER";
    }
}

For more information about PHP's cURL library, you can read the manual.

Best regards.

Answer 2

Just for addition to your approach regarding retrieval of content from Wordpress DB. You can also make use of REST web-service means then from CI you only need to call the url and which correspondingly provides the required data in json or any format that you like.

And for creating a web-service inside WordPress, you can make use of this plugin :

https://wordpress.org/plugins/json-api/