[wp-hackers] Page Title for Admin Menu

scribu scribu at gmail.com
Mon Feb 16 11:41:51 GMT 2009 

You can post a ticket with a patch on trac
<http://core.trac.wordpress.org>(all you need is a WP.org account,
which anyone can have).

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 8:03 AM, Chris Williams <chris at clwill.com> wrote:

> So I have a small fix for get_admin_page_title that fixes this issue.  I'm
> not connected into the trac/dev/svn system.  Would someone more connected
> like to take a peek?
>
>
> > From: Chris Williams <chris at clwill.com>
> > Reply-To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> > Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:50:22 -0800
> > To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> > Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Page Title for Admin Menu
> >
> >> I may play around with core some more to see exactly what it takes to
> >> get_admin_page_title to return the page title of the top-level menu
> >> item.
> >
> > Right, this is the spot, I started walking through it the other day, and
> > then I just had to get my plugin out, so I stopped poking through it.  I
> > think I have some time, so I'll resume.
> >
> > Thanks for your input,
> > Chris
> >
> >> From: Chris Jean <gaarai at gaarai.com>
> >> Reply-To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> >> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:27:04 -0600
> >> To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> >> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Page Title for Admin Menu
> >>
> >> It's true that Comments is like Dashboard. In fact, it is set up exactly
> >> the same way. If you look at the code, it doesn't have a page title
> >> declared for it either. Just like all the other top-level menu items of
> >> core, that entry is just an empty string.
> >>
> >> Just like Dashboard, if you look in the wp-admin/comment.php file,
> >> you'll find it manually assigning the title to the $title variable.
> >>
> >> If you are looking at the wp-admin/menu.php file and see where the array
> >> has the first entry defined, that's not the page title; its the menu
> >> title. If you look at the add_menu_page code, you see that the page
> >> title is put in the fourth array location while the menu title is put in
> >> the first array location.
> >>
> >> I would agree with you on the idea of this being a bug if there is
> >> inconsistent code and things don't work properly. However, things do
> >> work properly and each instance of a stand-alone top-level menu item in
> >> core is coded the same way. This means that this odd situation is either
> >> a) a bad side-effect of trying to stay as backwards-compatible as
> >> possible or b) some very sloppy coding that was patched up quickly and
> >> never cleaned up.
> >>
> >> Since I don't have access to all the code revisions between 1.2.2 and
> >> 1.5, I can only make assumptions. However, the fact that the parameter
> >> exists, the manual entries into the $menu array all have a blank string
> >> in that array position, and the existence of the $title variable all
> >> suggest that this is due to supporting legacy code.
> >>
> >> I may play around with core some more to see exactly what it takes to
> >> get_admin_page_title to return the page title of the top-level menu
> >> item. Maybe I can find a solution that is cleaner than the one that I've
> >> already provided. Who knows, I may even find a way to clean up core so
> >> that the page title of the top-level item is used in the event that it
> >> doesn't have any sub-menu items and $title isn't set. Of course, I'll
> >> have to do this without breaking anything.
> >>
> >> Happy 0123456789 Day everyone.
> >>
> >> Chris Jean
> >> http://gaarai.com/
> >> http://wp-roadmap.com/
> >> http://dnsyogi.com/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Chris Williams wrote:
> >>> Thank you for this comprehensive detective job, an excellent write-up,
> and a
> >>> way around it.
> >>>
> >>> However, I'm even more convinced that this is a bug, not a feature.
>  There
> >>> is another top menu item in core that has no submenus, and also has a
> proper
> >>> page title, and that's Comments.  From what I can tell, it gets away
> with it
> >>> because it manually loads the menu[] array, as other core items do.
> >>>
> >>> More to the point, however, I think it should be possible to create a
> >>> plug-in that has only a top-menu item, and still benefits from a page
> title.
> >>> Your ingenious solution below will be a temporary fix, but I think a
> real
> >>> one is also in order.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks again for your detective work, perhaps you missed your calling
> -- the
> >>> CIA could use help finding Bin Laden :)
> >>>
> >>> Chris
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> From: Chris Jean <gaarai at gaarai.com>
> >>>> Reply-To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> >>>> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:36:43 -0600
> >>>> To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> >>>> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Page Title for Admin Menu
> >>>>
> >>>> I don't believe that it's a bug; rather, I think that this is just a
> >>>> complex issue. Let me explain.
> >>>>
> >>>> I dug through 1.5 - 2.7.1 and found that all of those versions have
> the
> >>>> page title parameter for top-level menu items. I also found that none
> of
> >>>> those versions actually define the page title for any of the menus
> built
> >>>> into core (they just use a blank string: '').
> >>>>
> >>>> However, I have found that all of the versions actually do refer to
> the
> >>>> page title in the $menu data structure. You can find references to
> page
> >>>> title by searching for "$menu_array[3]" in the
> >>>> wp-admin/includes/plugin.php file (wp-admin/admin-functions.php file
> in
> >>>> versions before 2.3).
> >>>>
> >>>> I traced the logic and found that its possible use comes down to the
> >>>> code found in the get_admin_page_title and get_admin_page_parent
> >>>> functions. Basically, if a parent can't be found (returned from
> >>>> get_admin_page_parent), there is the possibility that
> >>>> get_admin_page_title will use the top-level menu item's page title.
> >>>> However, when I looked through get_admin_page_parent, I can't think of
> >>>> any possible scenario where a parent wouldn't be found.
> >>>>
> >>>> Looking farther back to version 1.2.2 (the only publicly available
> >>>> version I could find pre-1.5), I see that there is a single-level menu
> >>>> that doesn't support page titles. This combined with the fact that 1.5
> >>>> has two-level menus and more-or-less unused top-level menu page
> titles,
> >>>> I believe that I know why they are there.
> >>>>
> >>>> I believe somewhere in 1.3 or 1.4 development, page titles were added
> to
> >>>> the menus. Then sometime before 1.5, second level menus were added
> which
> >>>> had their own page titles. These new page titles superseded the old
> page
> >>>> titles, but the top-level-menu page titles remained for backwards
> >>>> compatibility.
> >>>>
> >>>> Here's where the story gets weird.
> >>>>
> >>>>  From all the code I've looked through, the presence of a page title
> >>>> parameter for a top-level menu is nothing more than vestigial. Even in
> >>>> the earliest publicly available builds of WP where the parameter
> exists,
> >>>> the core doesn't make any use of the parameter and simply shuffles
> past
> >>>> its existence by filling in the field with empty strings.
> >>>>
> >>>> Based on this, I would assume that there aren't any top-level menus
> that
> >>>> are devoid of sub-menu items and that the top-level menu items serve
> as
> >>>> nothing more than simple containers for the sub-menu items. And I
> would
> >>>> be wrong.
> >>>>
> >>>> Just look at a new install of WordPress, and you will see a standalone
> >>>> top-level menu: Dashboard. In a standard install, Dashboard doesn't
> have
> >>>> any sub-menu items. When I realized this, I looked at the code and
> found
> >>>> that there weren't any entries in $submenu to create the Dashboard
> >>>> sub-menu entry that appears if plugins, such as Akismet, adds a
> sub-menu
> >>>> to the Dashboard top-level menu.
> >>>>
> >>>> This confused me at first, but I looked at the add_submenu_page code
> and
> >>>> found that it generates the first $submenu entry automatically when a
> >>>> sub-menu page is added to a menu entry that doesn't have any sub-menu
> >>>> pages.
> >>>>
> >>>> Even though the Dashboard menu entry doesn't have any sub-menu entries
> >>>> by default, it still does not make use of the page title parameter.
> >>>> Instead, it does something hackish (IMHO), it has to manually set the
> >>>> $title variable before get_admin_page_title is called. The
> >>>> get_admin_page_title will immediately return the value of the $title
> >>>> variable if it is not empty.
> >>>>
> >>>> After seeing this, I cooked up the following quick plugin:
> >>>>
> >>>>     <?php
> >>>>
> >>>>     /*
> >>>>     Plugin Name: Menu Test
> >>>>     */
> >>>>
> >>>>     add_action( 'admin_menu', menu_test_add_pages );
> >>>>
> >>>>     function menu_test_add_pages() {
> >>>>         $page_ref = add_menu_page( '', 'Menu Test', 10, 'menu-test',
> >>>>     'menu_test_index' );
> >>>>
> >>>>         add_action( 'load-' . $page_ref, 'menu_test_set_title' );
> >>>>     }
> >>>>
> >>>>     function menu_test_index() {
> >>>>         echo "<h3>Menu Test</h3>";
> >>>>     }
> >>>>
> >>>>     function menu_test_set_title() {
> >>>>         global $title;
> >>>>         $title = 'Menu Test';
> >>>>     }
> >>>>
> >>>>     ?>
> >>>>
> >>>> All this plugin does is register a menu entry that doesn't have any
> >>>> sub-menu entries and give the resulting page a title. This is more or
> >>>> less the same way that Dashboard has set the title since 1.5.
> >>>>
> >>>> Sorry for the long reply. It was fun digging into this. I hope that my
> >>>> reply helps you out.
> >>>>
> >>>> Chris Jean
> >>>> http://gaarai.com/
> >>>> http://wp-roadmap.com/
> >>>> http://dnsyogi.com/
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Chris Williams wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Exactly, so is that a bug?  Is it impossible/illegal to have a
> plug-in
> >>>>> with
> >>>>> only a top level menu?
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> From: Gaarai <gaarai at gaarai.com>
> >>>>>> Reply-To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> >>>>>> Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:21:02 -0600
> >>>>>> To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> >>>>>> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Page Title for Admin Menu
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> In my experience, it isn't the top-level menu that sets the title;
> >>>>>> rather, the first sub-menu under it does.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Chris Jean
> >>>>>> http://gaarai.com/
> >>>>>> http://wp-roadmap.com/
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Chris Williams wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Despite my overabundant use of the word "really" (which I "really"
> >>>>>>> regret
> >>>>>>> now :) ), does anybody have any input on this issue?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> From: Chris Williams <chris at clwill.com>
> >>>>>>>> Reply-To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> >>>>>>>> Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:27:16 -0800
> >>>>>>>> To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> >>>>>>>> Subject: [wp-hackers] Page Title for Admin Menu
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> I am writing a plugin that adds an admin menu page (not submenu).
>  It
> >>>>>>>> does
> >>>>>>>> this because it¹s really quite a separate thing < a calendar of
> racing
> >>>>>>>> events, nothing to do with the WP functions, it¹s really a
> separate
> >>>>>>>> data
> >>>>>>>> table and everything.  So, it doesn¹t really belong down in
> ³settings²,
> >>>>>>>> or
> >>>>>>>> ³tools².
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> This is all good, I have it working with add_menu_page and all is
> fine.
> >>>>>>>> It
> >>>>>>>> really only needs one page (like the ³Links² or ³Comments² menu
> items),
> >>>>>>>> it¹s
> >>>>>>>> just an ³edit events² page.  There is one small problem, and
> that¹s
> >>>>>>>> that
> >>>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>>> HTML page title is null.  It says simply ³[blogname] > --
> Wordpress².
> >>>>>>>> Nothing I put in the $page_title parameter on add_menu_page works.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> If I have a submenu page, it works, but not with just a plain
> >>>>>>>> add_menu_page.
> >>>>>>>> I believe the issue is in get_admin_page_title in
> >>>>>>>> wp-admin/includes/plugin.php, but I haven¹t debugged it
> completely.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> My questions are: 1) am I doing something incorrectly that is
> causing
> >>>>>>>> this,
> >>>>>>>> 2) is this a known issue and I should just chill, or 3) should I
> figure
> >>>>>>>> it
> >>>>>>>> out and propose a patch?
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Thanks,
> >>>>>>>> Chris
> >>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>>> wp-hackers mailing list
> >>>>>>>> wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> >>>>>>>> http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-hackers
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
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> >>>>>>
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> >>>>>
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