Recent portfolio shortcode customized

[rarowley]

I want the shortcode to randomly pull posts instead of pulling the most recent. How do I do that?

[mldarshana]

Hi There Andrew,

Thanks for writing in! The whole idea of recent posts shortcode is to display the latest posts. Custom development is outside the scope of the support, however I can provide you with an example code which you can add it into your child theme’s functions.php file. This code will affect to both posts and portfolio items. If you need more customizations, I suggest you to contact a developer to assist you.

First you need to setup a child theme and activate it and then you can add the following code into your child theme’s functions.php file.

function x_shortcode_recent_posts_random( $atts ) {
  extract( shortcode_atts( array(
    'id'           => '',
    'class'        => '',
    'style'        => '',
    'type'         => 'post',
    'count'        => '',
    'category'     => '',
    'offset'       => '',
    'orientation'  => '',
    // 'show_excerpt' => 'true',
    'no_sticky'    => '',
    'no_image'     => '',
    'fade'         => ''
  ), $atts, 'x_recent_posts' ) );

  $allowed_post_types = apply_filters( 'cs_recent_posts_post_types', array( 'post' => 'post' ) );
  $type = ( isset( $allowed_post_types[$type] ) ) ? $allowed_post_types[$type] : 'post';

  $id            = ( $id           != ''     ) ? 'id="' . esc_attr( $id ) . '"' : '';
  $class         = ( $class        != ''     ) ? 'x-recent-posts cf ' . esc_attr( $class ) : 'x-recent-posts cf';
  $style         = ( $style        != ''     ) ? 'style="' . $style . '"' : '';
  $count         = ( $count        != ''     ) ? $count : 3;
  $category      = ( $category     != ''     ) ? $category : '';
  $category_type = ( $type         == 'post' ) ? 'category_name' : 'portfolio-category';
  $offset        = ( $offset       != ''     ) ? $offset : 0;
  $orientation   = ( $orientation  != ''     ) ? ' ' . $orientation : ' horizontal';
  // $show_excerpt  = ( $show_excerpt == 'true' );
  $no_sticky     = ( $no_sticky    == 'true' );
  $no_image      = ( $no_image     == 'true' ) ? $no_image : '';
  $fade          = ( $fade         == 'true' ) ? $fade : 'false';

  $js_params = array(
    'fade' => ( $fade == 'true' )
  );

  $data = cs_generate_data_attributes( 'recent_posts', $js_params );

  $posts = get_posts( array(
    'orderby'             => 'rand',
    'post_type'           => "{$type}",
    'posts_per_page'      => "{$count}",
    'offset'              => "{$offset}",
    "{$category_type}"    => "{$category}",
    'ignore_sticky_posts' => $no_sticky
  ) );

  $output = "<div {$id} class=\"{$class}{$orientation}\" {$style} {$data} data-fade=\"{$fade}\" >";

    foreach ($posts as $post) {

      if ( $no_image == 'true' ) {
        $image_output       = '';
        $image_output_class = 'no-image';
      } else {
        $image              = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), 'entry-cropped' );
        $bg_image           = ( $image[0] != '' ) ? ' style="background-image: url(' . $image[0] . ');"' : '';
        $image_output       = '<div class="x-recent-posts-img"' . $bg_image . '></div>';
        $image_output_class = 'with-image';
      }

      $output .= '<a class="x-recent-post' . $count . ' ' . $image_output_class . '" href="' . get_permalink( $post->ID ) . '" title="' . esc_attr( sprintf( csi18n('shortcodes.recent-posts-permalink'), the_title_attribute( array( 'echo' => false, 'post' => $post->ID ) ) ) ) . '">'
                 . '<article id="post-' . $post->ID . '" class="' . implode( ' ', get_post_class('', $post->ID) ) . '">'
                   . '<div class="entry-wrap">'
                     . $image_output
                     . '<div class="x-recent-posts-content">'
                       . '<h3 class="h-recent-posts">' . get_the_title( $post->ID ) . '</h3>'
                       . '<span class="x-recent-posts-date">' . get_the_date( '', $post->ID ) . '</span>'
                     . '</div>'
                   . '</div>'
                 . '</article>'
               . '</a>';

    }

  $output .= '</div>';

  return $output;
}

add_filter('wp_head', 'custom_recent_posts');

function custom_recent_posts() {
  remove_shortcode( 'x_recent_posts' );
  remove_shortcode( 'recent_posts' );
  add_shortcode( 'x_recent_posts', 'x_shortcode_recent_posts_random' );
  add_shortcode( 'recent_posts', 'x_shortcode_recent_posts_random' );
}

Then you can test the shortcode:
[recent_posts type="portfolio" count="4"]

Hope that helps.