Call a Widget with a Shortcode

Posted on: April 12, 2010 by Chris Coyier

We covered how to run a shortcode in a widget. But what about inserting a widget with a shortcode? I recently had this situation come up. I had a single page where I just wanted to be able to chuck in a widget without the whole rigmarole of creating a special widgetized area and probably a custom page template for that widgetized area and such. I wanted to just put [widget widget_name="my_widget"] in the pages content and have that widget pop in. Turns out it wasn’t as easy I wanted it to be, but it’s not that bad…

The answer was creating a custom function for the functions.php file which would output any widget by name. There is a function just for that: the_widget() (incomplete codex page).

The logic

Test if widget exists
If it does…
1. Start capturing output
2. Output widget
3. End capturing output
4. Return captured output
If it doesn’t exist…
1. Output fail message

The code for functions.php

function widget($atts) {
    
    global $wp_widget_factory;
    
    extract(shortcode_atts(array(
        'widget_name' => FALSE
    ), $atts));
    
    $widget_name = wp_specialchars($widget_name);
    
    if (!is_a($wp_widget_factory->widgets[$widget_name], 'WP_Widget')):
        $wp_class = 'WP_Widget_'.ucwords(strtolower($class));
        
        if (!is_a($wp_widget_factory->widgets[$wp_class], 'WP_Widget')):
            return '<p>'.sprintf(__("%s: Widget class not found. Make sure this widget exists and the class name is correct"),'<strong>'.$class.'</strong>').'</p>';
        else:
            $class = $wp_class;
        endif;
    endif;
    
    ob_start();
    the_widget($widget_name, $instance, array('widget_id'=>'arbitrary-instance-'.$id,
        'before_widget' => '',
        'after_widget' => '',
        'before_title' => '',
        'after_title' => ''
    ));
    $output = ob_get_contents();
    ob_end_clean();
    return $output;
    
}
add_shortcode('widget','widget');

Usage

Now in Post/Page content, you can use the widget just by referencing it by name:

[widget widget_name="Your_Custom_Widget"]

Possibly Related Posts

Posted in: PHP
Tags: functions, Theme, widgets
Discussion: 16 Comments

Thumb for Call a Widget with a Shortcode

Let's talk it out, folks.

_DorsVenabili said on April 12, 2010:

Great post!, thanks! :)

#1
Jason said on April 13, 2010:

Chris, this is awesome. Thanks!
I’ve wondered how difficult it would be to wedge a widget into a content page. :D

#2
webmotionuk said on April 13, 2010:

Thanks for sharing Chris! Just what I was looking for.
By the way, slight typo on 2.4. above.

#3
Danny G Smith said on April 13, 2010:

What if you need to call the same widget more than once? How do you handle the name collisions?

#4
- Chris Coyier said on April 13, 2010:
  
  Did you try it and it failed? I would think it would be fine, but I haven’t tested that yet.
  
  #4.1
Andy said on April 16, 2010:

Hey Chris

Can you call this via php at all?

Maybe something like this?

<?php widget(widget_name=Your_Custom_Widget') ; ?></code>

#5
Chris Coyier said on April 16, 2010:

Check out the function in the code above:

the_widget

#6
Michael Krapf said on April 20, 2010:

Is there a way to include an $instance in the shortcode?

An example of the full version would be:

<?php the_widget('WP_Widget_Text', $instance, $args); ?>

If so, then you could narrow the call using

instance:
* title
* text
* filter

So in addition to calling the widget, I would like to specify which version of the widget.

#7
- Patrik Spathon said on May 5, 2010:
  
  Is it something like this you were looking for?
  
  extract(shortcode_atts(array(
  'widget_name' => FALSE,
  'instance' => ''
  ), $atts));
  $instance = str_ireplace("&", '&' ,$instance);
  
  then you can set the instances for the widget.
  
  Usage
  
  [widget widget_name="WP_Widget_Pages" instance="title=Pages&sortby=menu_order&exclude=2,41"]
  
  #7.1
Todd Halfpenny said on April 30, 2010:

This is very handy and something I may need to turn into a plugin so that folk don’t need to dabble with the code.
Might be worth doing a spot of self promotion too (sorry ;-) ) for a plugin I have written that let’s you include a whole widgetised area inline insde wordpress page/post content… if you’re interested check out the Widgets on Pages plugin over at wordpress.org.
I’d be interested in hearing your views on this.

#8
Neil said on May 2, 2010:

This is great, thanks.
I’d like to second Michael’s question.
I don’t understand how to call a particular text widget. Is there any way to specify ID or similar?
many thanks

#9
- Chris Coyier said on May 2, 2010:
  
  I wish I had a perfect answer… The data exists so there is SOME way to do it. With this code though we are basically creating a new instance of the widget when it is called, not calling a pre-existing widget as defined in the Widgets area of the admin.
  
  #9.1
Thomas Scholz said on May 18, 2010:

The first occurrence of $class (in sprintf()) is undefined. And where do you get the $instance from?

Why did you give the function widget() such a generic name?

#10
Chris Schryer said on July 4, 2010:

I might be well out to sea here, but I thought you could only call shortcodes on WordPress.com blogs, not self-hosted ones? I tried, just in case, and all that happens is I get the shortcode outputted as text. Any ideas? Am I missing something obvious?
Thanks
C

#11
Kerri Lotus said on July 8, 2010:

am i doing something wrong? i tried to insert the code into functions.php and it broke my entire installation

#12
Ben Cooling said on June 11, 2012:

I have released a plugin, Widget Instance ,that addresses the question that Michael Krapf and Neil asked in the comment thread and that Chris Coyier left unanswered as far as providing an implementation.

#13

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