How to change title attribute returned by comments_popup_link()?

Question

I can change label of comments by altering Comment(s) from parameter of following function: comments_popup_link('No Comments;', '1 Comment;', '% Comments;'); But, seems that title attribute is returned from core modules. Suggest me to alter title attribute without editing core modules.

Answer 1

If you look into the function comments_popup_link() you will see the following code at the end:

$title = the_title_attribute( array('echo' => 0 ) );

echo apply_filters( 'comments_popup_link_attributes', '' );

echo ' title="' . esc_attr( sprintf( __('Comment on %s'), $title ) ) . '">';
comments_number( $zero, $one, $more );
echo '</a>'; // last line

Note the call to __(), the translation function. We can filter 'gettext' to change the result. Since we do not want to run our filter on every translation – that would be too slow – we start the filter when the hook 'comments_popup_link_attributes' is called:

add_filter( 'comments_popup_link_attributes', 't5_cclta_init' );

function t5_cclta_init( $attrs )
{
    add_filter( 'gettext', 't5_cclta_change_title', 10, 3 );
    return $attrs;
}

Now we need just the real filter function:

function t5_cclta_change_title( $translated, $text, $domain )
{
    remove_filter( 'gettext', 't5_cclta_change_title', 10, 3 );

    if ( 'default' === $domain && 'Comment on %s' === $text )
    {
        return 'Talk about %s';
    }

    return $translated;
}

And now the title attribute says: Talk about The Post Title.