Twig Anything: muestra cualquier dato de Discourse en WordPress – un plugin de WordPress de código abierto

[meglio (Anton)]

Open-sourcing Twig Anything – un plugin completo de WordPress para recuperar y mostrar datos JSON, CSV o MySQL – desde cualquier lugar, incluso desde Discourse Data Explorer.

Código fuente

Haz un fork; las PR son bienvenidas:

Bitbucket

Temas relacionados aquí en Meta (ignora la información sobre precios; ahora es GRATIS y de CÓDIGO ABIERTO):

• Announcing WordPress plugin to display any data from Discourse
• Display Data Explorer query results in WordPress (with TwigAnything)
• "Recently joined" widget for WordPress (Illustrated Tutorial)
• "Who's online" widget in Discourse - my version

Instalación en WordPress

1. Clona el repositorio con Git
2. Copia la carpeta plugin_src a tu directorio de plugins de WordPress
3. Renombra plugin_src a twig-anything
4. Activa el plugin en el panel de control de WordPress

---

Características

• Entiende JSON de cualquier complejidad
• Obtiene JSON desde URLs (demo) o cualquier dato de la base de datos MySQL de tu blog (demo, tutorial)
• Lector configurable de CSV (valores separados por comas)
• Almacena en caché los datos recuperados localmente para mejorar el rendimiento
• Utiliza valores expirados de la caché como respaldo si la fuente de datos no está disponible
• Sintaxis Twig sencilla para mostrar datos (con resaltado de sintaxis)
• Incrusta en cualquier lugar de WordPress usando shortcodes
• Compatible con Visual Composer (demo)
• Se integra con Discourse (demo, tutorial 1, tutorial 2)

---

Donaciones

Cualquier donación a PayPal a.andriievskyi@gmail.com se utilizará para:

• alojar la página principal https://twiganything.com/
• desarrollo continuo, revisión de PR y soporte no prioritario

Registro de cambios de versiones

La versión actual de Twig Anything es 1.6.5

v1.6.5 ^2017-12-05

• Actualización de la biblioteca CodeMirror a la versión 5.32.0
  (el paquete existente dejó de funcionar
  con la última versión del navegador Google Chrome)

• Envolver la biblioteca CodeMirror para evitar conflictos con las instancias de CodeMirror
  cargadas por otros plugins o temas de WordPress

• Alternar el modo de pantalla completa de CodeMirror con Ctrl-Enter en lugar de F11
  (F11 tiene un propósito diferente en macOS)

• Utilizar la biblioteca Clipboard.js en lugar de ZeroClipboard, que ya no es compatible y está obsoleta

v1.6.3 ^2016-03-13

• Agregar selector GET/POST a la fuente de datos de URL
• Actualizar la biblioteca React.js a la versión 0.14.7

v1.6.2 ^2016-01-23

• Hacer disponibles las funciones get_post_meta() y get_current_post_meta() en las plantillas Twig (caso de uso de ejemplo)

v1.6.1 ^2015-08-14

• Agregar la función {{request('var-name')}} a las plantillas Twig
• Agregar la fuente de datos «Vacío» que no recuperará nada y siempre devolverá datos vacíos; útil para la herencia de plantillas y su uso por otras plantillas.

v1.6 ^2015-08-03

• Hacer disponibles las variables globales de WordPress en las plantillas Twig mediante {{ wp_globals }}
  Nota: A partir de ahora, el acceso a wpdb solo es posible como {{ wp_globals.wpdb }}
• Hacer disponibles las condicionales de WordPress en las plantillas Twig
• Hacer disponibles las funciones wp_get_current_user() y get_current_user_meta() en las plantillas Twig
• Permitir que la fuente de datos de URL acepte sintaxis Twig en las URLs, al igual que las plantillas Twig

v1.5 ^2015-08-02

• Agregar los filtros |json y |json_pretty_print
• Más puntos de extensibilidad para desarrolladores de complementos:
  – Capacidad de cargar la biblioteca React.js como un script dependiente
  – Controlar la eliminación de saltos de línea en las plantillas
  – Sobrescribir la configuración de Twig al renderizar plantillas

v1.4 ^2015-07-30

• Soporte de widgets: agregar un widget personalizado llamado «Plantilla Twig»

v1.3 ^2015-07-27

• Puntos de extensibilidad para formatos y fuentes de datos personalizados
• Actualización para compatibilidad con PHP 5.3 (¡sin garantías!)

v1.2 ^2015-07-26

• Mejorar el motor de caché para que los valores en caché expirados aún puedan usarse como respaldo
• Agregar una opción para configurar cómo se manejan los errores de datos:
• Usar la caché o no mostrar nada
• Usar la caché o mostrar error
• Siempre mostrar error
• Nota: En el modo de vista previa, los errores siempre se muestran.
• Hacer el modo de vista previa más inteligente

v1.1 ^2015-07-12

• Soporte para Visual Composer (demo)

v1.0 ^2015-07-01

• Lanzamiento inicial

[meglio (Anton)]

What if data cannot be fetched?

Sometimes, data cannot be retrieved and an error is thrown.

For example, JSON API is not accessible, or a file cannot be found to load CSV rows, or a remote database is not accessible because username/password do not match.

For such cases, Twig Anything lets you configure what to do if an error occurs during data retrieval:

The setting can be configured for every template individually. Possible options:

• Use cache or display nothing . If there is outdated data in cache, it is used, otherwise nothing is displayed
• Use cache or display error . The same as above, will try to use a cached value, even if it has expired; however, if nothing found in cache, an error is displayed.
• Always display error . This option will let the template always show the error message; might be useful while your WordPress website is still not so popular and is being actively developed.

Internals

The schema below demonstrates what happens behind the scenes every time a Twig template is processed:

As you can see, the logic is not trivial and lets the cache system play well with the error handling engine. However, you won’t have to think much about it as it all happens automatically. All you need is to choose one of the 3 options outlined above.

[meglio (Anton)]

FAQ

Functionality

Minimum Requirements

• WordPress version 3.6.1 or greater
• PHP version 5.4 or greater

How do I render data in my post / page / widget etc?

Once you created a Twig Template (just like you would do for posts and pages), use a shortcode wherever you want to embed your template:
[twig-anything slug="template slug"]
It will be replaced by the rendered output of the template. Template slug is the same kind of slug that you will find for posts and pages.

Is the data cached locally?

Yes, you can optionally configure each template separately to cache the data fetched, to avoid multiple HTTP requests and file reads. The caching uses WordPress transient API. This means that if you use any caching plugin to speed up your website, Twig Anything will benefit from it as well.

What is Twig?

Twig is a very simple syntax that allows you to embed any structured data in any text, HTML etc. For example:
{{ data.weather.temperature }}
will output the temperature field of the weather object found in the data fetched from your configured data source.

Twig can filter and transform arrays and strings on the go. Read more in the Twig reference

Support

How do I get support?

I do a non-priority support through Discourse Meta, please report any issues in this topic.

I found a bug. Will it be fixed?

Yes, I hate bugs!

Can you add another source of data?

I am open to your ideas, please let me know in the forum.
PR also are welcome.

Licensing

The plugin is Open Source.

[meglio (Anton)]

How cache works

This topic discusses all the aspects of the cache engine in Twig Anything.

What is cache

For every Twig Template, there is a setting:

If you leave it empty, the data source will be fetched every time it is used in your site.

For instance, if your template reads data from some API, a new HTTP call will be made each time the template is shown in a wordpress page or post.

If 10 users open your site, 10 HTTP calls will be made. This is not good and you would likely want to retrieve data once only and then cache it in WordPress locally and reuse it.

That is where Cache lifetime in seconds comes into play.

If you set it to 60 seconds (= 1 minute), data will be re-fetched not more often than once a minute. If 10 users open your site within a minute, the local cached version will be used.

When to use cache and when not to

Caching helps to considerably reduce data fetching. But is it always needed? Actually, no.

Set cache lifetime when reading data from:

• URLs
• medium and large local files
• MySQL database with heavy queries

If you don’t cache data that comes from a URL, your website might freeze as soon as it is opened by many users simultaneously. It will also let your server eat more traffic.

Do not set cache lifetime when reading data from:

• small files, for example a CSV file with 100 lines
• WordPress MySQL database with queries (except very heavy queries that run for a second or longer)

Where cache is saved

Twig Anything uses standard WordPress transient1 mechanism to store cache.

By default, it is saved in database. However, Transients are inherently sped up by caching plugins. For example, a memcached plugin would make WordPress store transient values in fast memory instead of in the database.

This means that if you use caching plugins with your site, Twig Anything will benefit from it as well.

[meglio (Anton)]

CSV Format add-on

Download from WordPress Plugin Directory

Introduction

With this add-on, you can now read CSV lines and display them in your WordPress site.

CSV means comma-separated values.
A typical CSV file looks like this:

Belgium,Brussels,EUR,Euro,BE,.be
Belize,Belmopan,BZD,Dollar,BZ,.bz
Benin,Porto-Novo,XOF,Franc,BJ,.bj
Bhutan,Thimphu,BTN,Ngultrum,BT,.bt

You usually obtain CSV data when you export it from Excel, Google Spreadsheets and many other applications.

Features

• Filter and slice rows by any column
• Only pick the columns you want
• Upload CSV files to WordPress Media and read from there
• Control the output with a simple syntax
• Configure the delimiter, enclosure and escape characters

Screenshots

Settings screen

Template preview

Simple template code

CSV Format add-on is free - grab your copy from WordPress now!

[meglio (Anton)]

API Endpoints add-on

Construct your own WordPress API endpoints !
This workhorse is simply unbeatable when it comes to building your custom WordPress API.

---

Download now9 and convert your WordPress into an API machine.

Features

This comprehensive add-on is loaded with all features you would ever need to manage your own API. Endless possibilities at your fingertips:

Customize API URLs

http://mywordpress.com/api-endpoint/tld - change api-endpoint and tld in the plugin settings screen:

Minimal capability permission per API endpoint

The built-in WordPress roles/capabilities system is used. If you wish to restrict access to the API, you would usually do this:

• Optionally, use user role editor1 WordPress plugin to create a special role/capability, for example “”
• Create a separate WordPress user to access API (if you are the only consumer of your own API), or assign api capability to the users you want to grant API access to
• Enter the capability for your endpoint (see screenshot above).

Customize HTTP headers

By default, a few HTTP headers are set for you by default. This means that they will be always sent with every API response, unless you override them:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0

The first header allows your API to be called with using Ajax from domains other than your WordPress site’s one. The other ones prevent API responses from being cached by the caller.

Good news is that you can easily add more or override existing HTTP Headers:

In this example we add a header that tells the API caller that the output is in JSON format.

Return any data from your WordPress site

Yes, in your API endpoints you can return pretty anything: posts/pages, custom posts, comments, settings, users, site options, post metadata, users, drafts, activity and much more.

This is possible because Twig Anything can read from the MySQL database of your WordPress. This simply means that you can query any information from your site and output it in you API.

Turn any local file into an API (CSV, JSON, XML, you name it)

Because Twig Anything can read from many various sources and understand a lot of different formats, you can turn all this data into API!

JSON, XML and MySQL is understood out of the box.

And there is a number of free add-ons that add even more sources to fetch data from and turn it into API: local and remote databases, CSV1.

Fetch any data from 3rd party APIs and turn into your own API

Twig Anything can do that as well - and you can turn any Twig Template into an API Endpoint.

Boost API speed with the caching system out of the box

API Endpoints naturally benefit from the intelligent caching system of Twig Anything. Read more about How cache works in a message above in this topic.

Output API in any format, including, but not limited to, JSON, XML, RSS/ATOM, YAML and HTML.

You have full control of what API returns through Twig Templates.

For instance, this template:

… makes up a JSON response:

Control success/error templates

In the settings screen, setup your desired templates for both successful responses and failures. You get some good JSON defaults for you out of the box, but feel free to change to any other format, i.e. XML, YAML etc.

P.S. An example of a failure is an authentication error:

Intelligent template editor with code highlighting and full screen mode

[meglio (Anton)]

Retrieve and display data from WordPress database

So, you want to fetch some data from your WordPress database and then display it somewhere on your blog? Easy!

All you need to know is some basics of the MySQL and Twig syntax, which you can learn instantly and effortlessly. The fastest way is to look at the examples found in Twig Reference.

In this tutorial, let’s go through a few steps to display post status statistics like this:

• Drafts: 3
• Published: 19

In other words, we want to display the number of published vs unpublished pages.

Step 1. Create a new Twig Template

Simply click on the “Add New” menu item under the “Twig Templates” menu to create a new Twig Template. Give it a name and choose MySQL settings as by the screenshot:

What does MySQL Result Type mean? It simply allows you to choose among the available native WordPressdata retrieval methods. In short:

• get_var – get a single value
• get_row – get a single row
• get_results – get all rows from the result of the MySQL query
• get_col – get multiple rows, every one consisting of a single column only

Step 2. Build a MySQL query

Next, enter your MySQL query into the MySQL Query area. The query is pretty simple – it looks like a standard MySQL query with just a few additions in the syntax:

SELECT post_status, count(post_status) as count
FROM {{ wp_globals.wpdb.posts }}
WHERE post_type = 'page'
GROUP BY post_status

If you didn’t know, in WordPress, table names are usually prefixed with wp_. For example, wp_posts, wp_postmeta etc. However, there is no guarantee that the prefix used in your WordPress instance is wp_ . What is more, in multisite setup, each blog will use its own tables, every one named differently. That is why WordPress makes table names available in a special global variable – $ wpdb . Twig Anything makes this variable available in your queries, so that you can use it to retrieve the correct table name, like this: {{ wp_globals.wpdb.posts }}

When rendering your template, this will be transformed to wp_posts or whatever is correct for your particular blog setup. I recommend you looking at the WordPress documentation for the complete list of the table namesavailable.

Actually, Twig Anything makes all WordPress globals available for you, so, for example, you can get the month of the post being displayed: {{ currentmonth }} .

For your convenience, there are more useful things available in both MySQL queries and Twig Templates, which is covered in the templates reference.

Step 3. Build a template

Now that we know which data is retrieved from our database, we want to display it. For this to happen, we have to enter a template, which is a simple HTML with Twig syntax enabled.

<ul>
{% for stat in data %}
  <li>
  {% if stat.post_status == 'draft' %}
    Drafts:
  {% elseif stat.post_status == 'publish' %}
    Published:
  {% else %}
    {{ stat.post_status }}:
  {% endif %}
  {{ stat.count }}
  </li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>

In your templates, you can access the MySQL result by a simple syntax:

{{ data.field1.field2.etc }}

In other words, the query result is stored in the data variable, which is accessible in your template. Because we selected get_results MySQL Result Type above, we expect data to hold an array, so we can loop over it with using Twig’s for statement:

{% for stat in data %} ... {% endfor %}

Everything inside this loop can access the stat variable, which is a particular row from our MySQL query result.

Now, we can use simple Twig’s if/else statement and {{stat.post_status}} and {{stat.count}} to output data in a simple <li> HTML tag, which makes up a single item in a list.

Finally, we wrap everything in <ul>...</ul> , which makes up a complete non-enumerated list in HTML.

When done, click on the blue Publish button to make your template available and ready to use.

You can optionally preview how your template renders by clicking on the “View rendered template” button right under the title:

Step 4. Embed it anywhere in WordPress

To output your template in WordPress, just use the standard WordPress shortcodes mechanism:

[twig-anything slug="abc"]

Replace abc by the slug found under the template title:

Alternatively, copy a ready-to-use shortcode from the Shortcode panel found to the right of your template code:

Now you can output your template wherever you wish: in WordPress posts, pages, widgets, footers etc.

[meglio (Anton)]

Import data from Discourse to WordPress

Anything you can see on the Discourse website you can also get in JSON format – because Discourse is backed by a complete JSON api.

To retrieve information from Discourse and output it in WordPress, here are some steps you can follow. In our example, let us fetch the results of searching for the “image” keyword and display the list of topics in WordPress.

Step 1. Find data that you want to display in WordPress

First, open your forums home page. For demonstration purposes, we will use the Discourse Meta home page. Open Developer Tools: Ctrl+Shift+J (Window) or Command+Option+i (MacOS) or Menu -> More Tools -> Developer Tools.

Now switch to the Network tab to show HTTP requests, then click on the XHR tab. Now search for the “Image” keyword and watch for a new HTTP request appearing in the Developer Tools:

Now click on the HTTP request on the left and a lot of details will appear on the right. All you need is to copy the Request URL:

In our example, the request URL is:

https://meta.discourse.org/search/query?term=image&include_blurbs=true&_=1436341924674

Next, remove the &_=1436341924674 part from the URL and add .json right before the question mark – you will get the JSON endpoint URL that outputs the search results in the JSON format:

https://meta.discourse.org/search/query.json?term=image&include_blurbs=true

Now, open the URL in your browser and copy all the output – Right Click, then Select All, then Right Click, then Copy:

Open this tiny nline JSON editor and paste the JSON text into the left panel, so that you can see the data in a structured way on the right panel:

Finally, you will find all the data that you want to fetch and display on your website, so let us proceed to the following step.

Step 2. Create a new Twig Template

Click on the “Add New” menu under the “Twig Templates” menu and configure from where data should be retrieved:

The next step is to enter the template that will display your data the way you want it. The template is simply HTML with some Twig syntax in it.

To output any field from the data, use the {{data.field1.field2.etc}} syntax. data is a starting point keyword that is always passed to Twig and holds the whole JSON data.

In our example, we want to loop through the topics array. We should also check if there are any results available to output. So our first version of the template looks like this:

{% if data.topics is iterable %}
 
  {% for topic in data.topics %}
    - {{ topic.title }}<br/>
  {% endfor %}
 
{% else %}
  No results
{% endif %}

Here is how this template renders:

[twig-anything] shortcode error: Cannot json-decode the data retrieved. The json_decode() PHP function returned NULL.

Step 3. Make topic titles clickable

Let us make topic titles clickable. For this, we will need to use the <a> HTML tag and build a topic link with using topic id and topic slug.

{% if data.topics is iterable %}
 
  {% for topic in data.topics %}
    - <a target="_blank"
          href="https://meta.discourse.org/t/{{topic.slug}}/{{topic.id}}">
        {{ topic.title }}
      </a>
      <br/>
  {% endfor %}
 
{% else %}
  No results
{% endif %}

That easy! Now our topic titles are clickable, check it right here:

[twig-anything] shortcode error: Cannot json-decode the data retrieved. The json_decode() PHP function returned NULL.

Step 4. Embed the template anywhere in WordPress

To output your template in WordPress, just use the standard WordPress shortcodes mechanism:

[twig-anything slug="abc"]

Replace abc by the slug found under the template title:

Alternatively, copy a ready-to-use shortcode from the Shortcode panel found to the right of your template code:

Now you can output your template wherever you need in WordPress: in posts, pages, widgets, footers etc.

[meglio (Anton)]

A piece of feedback from the former support forum:

[allu (Allen)]

@meglio

it’s now FREE and OPEN SOURCE

I don’t see any way to download this plugin, only a button to buy it for USD 59. What is the status of this plugin now?

[meglio (Anton)]

There’s a link to a BitBucket repository above — please download it from there. Just got no time to update the website yet.

[Stephen]

Is it possible to manipulate data from the JSON?

For example, using the Events Plugin from @angus to add topic.event.start which is in UTC format:

2018-07-25T02:00:37+00:100:

Could we easily convert to a human-readable format in a set time zone?

[meglio (Anton)]

@Stephen

Is it possible to manipulate data from the JSON?

Data can be manipulated by using features of the Twig template language: Documentation - Twig - The flexible, fast, and secure PHP template engine

[Stephen]

Where’s the best place to file bugs with the plugin?

[meglio (Anton)]

As they are rare, I think it’s okay if you report them just here in this thread. Thanks.

[baileys2611 (Simon)]

Hi Anton, I’m trying to use Twig Anything (we purchased it today by the way) and am trying to use the wp_get_current_user_id() inside an SQL query - coming up with “Failed preparing MySQL query: The function “wp_get_current_user_id” does not exist. Did you mean “wp_get_current_user”, “get_current_blog_id”, “get_current_user_meta” in “template” at line 1”. In other words, it’s not finding the function I’m trying to use. Is that something that needs to be updated in the plugin?

[baileys2611 (Simon)]

Sorry - let me clarify the above (it’s long!) - getting the error: “The function “wp_get_current_user_id” does not exist.” when attempting to call {{ wp_get_current_user_id() }} through Twig Anything.

Thoughts?

[PatrickH (Patrick)]

is this plugin still supported ?
and is it possible to have this data also trough this plugin:

[meglio (Anton)]

I’m using the plugin on my own websites, and it is working okay, but I haven’t been developing new features for a while.

The plugin has been open sourced some time ago, so feel free to give it a try.

Contributions are welcome.

[eextra (Sylwia)]

Why doesn’t the demo(s) work?
Is the plugin okay?
Can the plugin be used with other csm’s but not only with wordpress?