How to deal with Wordpress bug: can't use wrapped and unwrapped shortcode on same post

Question

After trouble parsing wrapping and non-wrapping shortcodes on the same page, I came across this trac ticket from 3 years ago: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/9264

The trouble is WP cannot properly parse

[myshortcode att="bla"] and 
[myshortcode]Enclosed content[/myshortcode] 

on the same page. The above gives you one shortcode with $att "bla" and $content "and [myshortcode]Enclosed content."

Adding a closing [/myshortcode] tag does not help:

[myshortcode att="bla"][/myshortcode] and
[myshortcode]Enclosed content[/myshortcode] 

Wordpress fails to parse it, and you end up with this a shortcode with $att "bla" and $content "[/myshortcode] and [myshortcode]Enclosed content."

As the ticket author points out (6 months ago),

With both [test/][test]content[/test] and [test][/test][test]content[/test] broken it seems impossible to enter a shortcode with null content before another instance of the same shortcode tag.

The diff in the trac ticket doesn't seem to work*, so I'm wondering if anyone has dealt with this or can suggest a fix in wp-includes/shortcodes.php.

---

*Perhaps related to the comment just before the changed line in wp-includes/shortcodes.php:

// WARNING! Do not change this regex without changing do_shortcode_tag() and strip_shortcodes()

Answer 1

According to a new post by mdawaffe on the trac ticket referenced in this question:

[test id="1"/] first self closed, now [test id="2"]with content[/test]
[foo attr/]bar[foo attr/]bar[/foo]
[test/]
[test]foobar[/test]
[test id="1"][/test]

All these cases now work. Apart from unit tests, this ticket can be closed.

I am assuming this means it will not be an issue in 3.3.

Answer 2

As far as I know, you need to leave a single space between multiple shortcodes.

I believe you can do this without too much trouble

[myshortcode attr="test1" content="test1" ...etc]
[myshortcode attr="test2" content="test2" ...etc]
[myshortcode attr="test3" content="test3" ...etc]

This SHOULD also work:

[myshortcode]Enclosed content[/myshortcode] [myshortcode]Enclosed content[/myshortcode] [myshortcode]Enclosed content[/myshortcode] [myshortcode]Enclosed content[/myshortcode] [myshortcode]Enclosed content[/myshortcode]

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Also:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Shortcode_API

The parser does not handle mixing of enclosing and non-enclosing forms of the same shortcode as you would want it to. For example, if you have:

[myshortcode example='non-enclosing' /] non-enclosed content [myshortcode] enclosed content [/myshortcode]

Instead of being treated as two shortcodes separated by the text " non-enclosed content ", the parser treats this as a single shortcode enclosing " non-enclosed content [myshortcode] enclosed content".

So, this appears to not be a bug. This appears to be documented behavior.

Self closing shortcodes do work well together.

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Also I may not be understanding the problem, but I tried this:

[svg src="test" width="300" height="300" style="display:block; margin:auto;" type="embed"]1111[/svg] [svg src="test" width="300" height="300" style="display:block; margin:auto;" type="embed"]1111[/svg] [svg src="test" width="300" height="300" style="display:block; margin:auto;" type="embed"]1111[/svg] [svg src="test" width="300" height="300" style="display:block; margin:auto;" type="embed"]1111[/svg]

That worked perfectly.

The code ended up looking like this:

function process_shortcode( $atts , $input ) { 
    $valid_attributes = array( 'src' , 'style' , 'type' , 'width' , 'height' );

    $content = NULL;

    foreach( $atts as $attribute => $value ) { 
        if( ! in_array( $attribute , $valid_attributes ) ) { 
            $content .= "\n" . '<!-- Invalid attribute ignored: ' . $attribute . ' -->' . "\n";
        }   
    }   

    switch( $atts[ 'type' ] ) { 
        case 'iframe':
            $content .= '<iframe src="' . $atts[ 'src' ] . '" width="' . $atts[ 'width' ] . '" height="' . $atts[ 'height' ] . '" style="' . $atts[ 'style' ] . '">';
            $content .= '</iframe>';
        break;
        case 'embed':
        default:
            $content .= '<div>';
            $content .= $input;
            $content .= '<embed src="' . $atts[ 'src' ] . '" width="' . $atts[ 'width' ] . '" height="' . $atts[ 'height' ] . '" ';
            $content .= 'type="image/svg+xml" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/" style="' . $atts[ 'style' ] . '" /> ';
            $content .= '</div>';
        break;
    }

    return $content;
}