How to Create Nested Shortcodes in WordPress
When an editor adds a WordPress [shortcode] to a post or page, it’s replaced by the returned output of a handler function within a plug-in or the theme’s functions.php file. Let’s create a simple example:
// create a styled button
function ContactButton($params, $content = null) {
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
'url' => '/contact-us',
'type' => 'style1'
), $params));
return
'<a href="' . $url . '" class="button ' . $type. '">' . ucwords($content) . '</a>';
}
add_shortcode('button','ContactButton');
When the following code is encountered in page or post:
[button]contact us today[/button]
it’ll be translated to:
<a href="/contact-us" class="button style1">Contact Us Today</a>
The editor’s job is made far easier and they don’t need to worry about learning HTML. Let’s look at another example which creates a simple callout box:
// callout box
function CalloutBox($params, $content = null) {
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
'type' => 'style1'
), $params));
return
'<aside class="callout ' . $type . '">' . $content . '</aside>';
}
add_shortcode('callout','CalloutBox');
But what if our editor wants to insert a button inside their callout box?…
[callout]For more information [button]contact us today[/button][/callout]
As it stands, the current code will fail. The CalloutBox function is called first but the inner [button] will not be translated accordingly.
The key function for fixing the problem is do_shortcode() — it applies WordPress’s shortcode filter to any content. In this case, we want to allow the editor to add a [button] within our [callout] so we’d change modify the return statement of CalloutBox accordingly:
return
'<aside class="callout ' . $type . '">' .
do_shortcode($content) .
'</aside>';
The nested code above will now work as expected. However, the editor wouldn’t be permitted to nest a [callout] inside a [button]. It’s flexibility such as this which makes WordPress a joy to use — version 3.3 is available now.