http-syndication

This plugins offers the following “ground” functionnalities:

• 1. Display the content of a post or page without any header, sidebar and footer.
• 1. Importing the content from an external web site
• 1. Importing an internal content of the wordpress site
• 1. A few other deprecated functionalities

1. Displaying a post or page without any header, sidebar and footer

In order to render the raw content of a post or page without any header, sidebar and footer use the link:

http://#mywordpressadress?httpsyndication&p=#post_or_page_id&title=#1_or_0

where:

• #mywordpressadress is the wordpress web site adress.
• #post_or_page_id is the post or page id (you can read the post id in the http link when you edit the post).
• #1_or_0 defines whether the post title (enclosed in a <h1> HTML tag) is displayed (default is 1, i.e., true).

Remarks:

• In this text all words prefixed by #, e.g., #tag or #id correspond to a variable, e.g., #tag means any tag name or #id means an ID label.
• The post content is exported after filtering.

2. Importing the content from an external web site

In order to import an external a post or page contents in another post or page, use the following shortcode:

[import url="#external_resource_location" ]

where:

• #external_resource_location is the external web site http location.

Inside the [import ..] shortcode, the following options allows to select and adjust the content to import:

• Content selection:
  • body=1 : in order to only import the <body..>..</body> part of the <html><head>..</head><body..>..</body></html> page.
  • tag_id=#id : only extract the content of the 1st tag of the given id, i.e. the <#tag id="#id">..</#tag> part, where #tag is any tag (e.g., div, span, ..).
  • tag_class=#class : only extract the content of the 1st tag of the given class, i.e. the <#tag class="#class">..</#tag> part, where #tag is any tag (e.g., div, span, ..); the value #class can be a regex to deal with multiple defined classes.
  • tag_name=#name : only extract the content of all tags of the given name, i.e. the <#name ..>..</#name> part (for code safety only 100 tags can be extracted).
• Content filtering:
  • noscript=1 : in order to delete all <script..>..</script> parts, avoiding any active JavaScript running from the imported HTML.
  • raw_href=1 : in order to provide raw href values, instead of properly relocating relative href in the source HTML code, as done by default.
  • mediawiki=1 : adds the ?printable=yes&action=render query to the URL, in order to properly syndicate mediawiki sites.
  • style=#style or class=#class allows to encapsulate the content in a <div . with customized class and/or style attribute.

Example :

• [import url="http://localhost/wordpress/?cat=4687" tag_id="content" style="width:100%"] allows to import a category rendering with another page.

How can i know with id, tag or class to select?

• Display the page you want to import and consider the part of the page you want to select
• Use the right-button to select Inspect or Inspect Element in the context menu, that will show the page source at the choosen position
• Look around to find the <div or any other container with the proper id, tag or class (providing it is the first tag or class of this kind in the text)
• Then report the attribute value in your import short-code

Remarks:

• If the external content can not be read, an error message is produced in the page output.
• The external content target page must be written in correct HTML (e.g., attributes value must be between quotes), otherwise the parsing may fail.
• This functionality requires the allow_url_fopen option to be validated in the PHP configuration, otherwise an error message is produced in the page output.
• By construction the import is “dynamic”, i.e., each time the page is loaded, the external content is queried and inserted in the page. Good news, to be sure to have an updated information. Bad news, if the external web site is down or slowed down. You may consider having a cache mechanism to overcome related caveats.
• The external HTML content is imported with its external CSS class styles. For another WordPress site, the match is expected to be good. If this is an exotic content management system, the situation is less obvious: Local CSS patch is likely required, or some additional content filter has to be hooked.
• There is no way to prevent from infinite syndication loops between sites (e.g., a site with a page importing an external page that itself import the inquiring page).
• Unless using noscript=1, the external JavaScript code is imported. Though security flaws are normally not to be expected considering usual JavaScript security rules, clearly malicious code can easily hugely perturb the page rendering.
• The embed shortcode is a core WordPress feature. It can embed content from many resources via direct link, and the iframe allows to safely and obviously include any external site page in “frame”. The iframe plugin works well and properly make the job. The present import is a 3rd alternative, to be preferred when the former fail or mixing pages content is required.

3. Importing an internal content of the wordpress site

In order to import a post or page contents in another post or page, use the following shortcode:

• [import id="#post_or_page_id"] to include the filtered content of another post or page in the current content.
• [import id="#post_or_page_id" content=1] to include the raw (with shortcode expanded, but not content filter applied) of another post or page in the current content (to be used only if required).
• [import id="#post_or_page_id" title=1] to include the title of another post or page in the current content.

where:

• #post_or_page_id is the post or page id (you can read the post id in the http link when you edit the post).

Remarks:

• This avoids spurious import, e.g. of social media buttons (contrary to usual include plugins).
• Shortcode recursion is managed (i.e. stopped when an infinite loop is detected).

4. A few other deprecated functionalities

These additonal functionalities are deprecated but still available for backward compatibility

• Using the ?w=#id query allows to refer any page, post or archive by its numerical index.

• Using the [import wform=1 label="#theinputlabel"] shortcode, allows to insert a small input field to switch to any page, post or archive given its numerical index.

• Using the [import banner="#page_id" url="#external_url"]#link-text[/import] shortcode allows to display another site page in an iframe, with a banner from this site sitting on top of the external page. Inside the [import ..] shortcode, the following options allows to adjust the behavior.

  • header=false : in order to include or not the usual site header().php on the top of the banner
  • height=1000 : in order to adjust the height of the frame for very long external pages.
  • newtab=1 : in order to open the page and banner in a new browser window.
  • style="border:none;" : in order to adjust the height of the frame for very long external pages.