Wordpress $post Variable Quick Reference
This is a quick reference chart for the Wordpress $post array. The post array holds things like the post title, number of comments, status, date and time of last modification, and numerous other attributes.
This quick reference is for the Wordpress $post array. This array contains a bunch of info specific to each Wordpress post. The values in the chart below can be accessed for a given post within the loop using the following syntax:
$post->$key;
…where key is the value you want to access below. For example, you’ll notice at the top of this post is a post summary within a formatted div element. The summary is just a formatted version of the post excerpt, but if there’s no post excerpt I don’t want that div element showing up empty, so in that case, I hide it using the following code:
<?php
if($post->post_excerpt != '') :
echo '<div id="summary">';
echo '<strong>Summary:</strong><br />';
the_excerpt();
echo '</div>';
endif;
?>
I haven’t worked out some of the values in the chart below, so if you know what any of those missing values refer to, let me know.
Download this chart in MS Excel Format
$post Array Quick Reference
| Parameter | Sample Value | Notes |
| ID | 202 | Post ID number |
| post_author | 1 | Post author's user number |
| post_date | 2008-03-15 19:22:29 | |
| post_date_gmt | 2008-03-16 02:22:29 | GMT = Greenwich Mean Time |
| post_content | Actual post content, including markup | |
| post_title | Post title | |
| post_category | 0 | Number representing post category ID# |
| post_excerpt | Plain text without markup | |
| post_status | publish | Possible values: publish / pending / draft / private |
| comment_status | open | Possible values: open / closed |
| ping_status | open | open / closed |
| post_password | Will be empty if no password | |
| post_name | statistics | Same as post slug |
| to_ping | http://www.1to-ping.com, http://www.2to-ping.com, http://www.3to-ping.com | List of urls to ping when post is published (for unpublished posts) |
| pinged | http://www.pinged1.com, http://www.pinged2.com, http://www.pinged3.com | List of urls that have been pinged (for published posts) |
| post_modified | 2008-07-01 19:41:28 | Date the post was last modified |
| post_modified_gmt | 2008-07-02 02:41:28 | GMT date post was last modified |
| post_content_filtered | ||
| post_parent | ||
| guid | http://www.blogurl/postslug | This is url of post, but what does guid stand for? |
| menu_order | ||
| post_type | post | post / page (anything else?) |
| post_mime_type | ||
| comment_count | 4 | Number of comments, pings, and trackbacks combined |
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guid stands for global unique identifier. i think, they just say that an url identifies an object and this object is identified by exactly one url, if itis normalized.
Thanks Thomas! I’ll get that added
saved me, thanks dude!!!!!
Thanks a lot for this reference! helped me figure out a problem that was taking me hours.
Thanks for this summary – saved me big time
post_parent should give you the ID of a subpage’s parent page.
post_type can also be “attachment”, post_status will be “inherit” then..
this is how wordpress holds images
I love you for this post.
This is a great resource, I’m eternally forgetting what the variable that I’m after is called. A couple of points:
post_guid does indeed hold the url to the post, but it is the REAL url (not the permalink version), so if you’re linking to it from within the site, use get_permalink(), not guid.
menu_order holds the values for display order of pages (only works with pages, not posts).
post_content_filtered exists to store a cached version of post content (most likely with all the the_content filters already applied). If you’ve got a plugin that runs a very resource heavy filter on content, you might consider caching the results with post_content_filtered, and calling that from the front end instead.