This quick reference / cheatsheet is for the WordPress $post object. This object contains a bunch of info specific to each WordPress post. Scroll down for the complete table of object properties.
Download Printable versions (PDF)
Download PDF version (landscape orientation)
Download PDF version (portrait orientation)
How to use the $post object
The values in the chart below can be accessed for a given post within the loop using the following syntax:
1 | $post->$key; |
…where key is the property 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:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | <?phpif($post->post_excerpt != '') : echo '<div id="summary">'; echo '<strong>Summary:</strong><br />'; the_excerpt(); echo '</div>';endif;?> |
$post Object properties
| Property | Sample Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ID | 432 | Post ID |
| 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, pending, draft, private, inherit | Current status of the post |
| 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http://www.2to-ping.com, http://www.3to-ping.com | List of urls to ping when post is published (for unpublished posts) |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 | 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. | |
| post_parent | ID# of this post's parent. In the case of attachments, will be the post it's attached to. Defaults to 0 if no parent. | |
| guid | http://www.blogurl/postslug | Global Unique Identifier. The "real" URL to the post, not the permalink version. For pages, this is the actual URL. In the case of files (attachments), this holds the URL to the file. |
| menu_order | 0 1 2 etc… |
Holds values for display order of pages. Only works with pages, not posts. |
| post_type | page post attachment revision |
Self-explanatory for pages and posts. Any files uploaded are attachments and post revisions saved as revision |
| post_mime_type | text/html image/png image/jpg |
Only used for files (attachments). Contains the MIME type of the uploaded file. |
| comment_count | 4 | Number of comments, pings, and trackbacks combined |
Thanks to everyone who commented on this post to help fill in some of the missing values!
