if the post has content

Question

I am setting up a one page WordPress site. I am getting some pages listed in my site that does not have content. For example, I will get the empty blog page as well as the blog template. So I thought I could throw in a check to see if the page has content and if it does go ahead and post that information. I am having trouble getting it to work. I am using a custom query for the homepage. So I thought I could do this

 if ( $page_query->have_posts() ) : while ( $page_query->have_posts() ) : $page_query->the_post();
 if( $page_query->post_content != ''){
       get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() );
 }
 endwhile; endif;

problem is that I get an error on that code and I can't figure out why. I get this error

Notice: Undefined property: WP_Query::$post_content in

Answer 1

The content is a property of the post object, not of the query object.

Use $post or get_post() instead:

if( '' !== get_post()->post_content ) {
// do something
}

Answer 2

What about

if ( !empty( get_the_content() ) ){ 
//code 
}

Answer 3

i have implemented some "has_content()" methods for several times over years now and there is always enough time in between so i need to search again a bit to answer this question.

anyways - this is my solution, which i like to find the next time here - so its for reference.

all "inside loop" functions can be replaced by a post objects "post_content"

in functions.php and similar files:

// write inside the loop
$the_content = apply_filters('the_content', get_the_content());
if ( !empty($the_content) ) {
  echo $the_content;
}
// with post object by id
$post = get_post(12); // specific post
$the_content = apply_filters('the_content', $post->post_content);
if ( !empty($the_content) ) {
  echo $the_content;
}

as function

// call inside the loop
function mytheme_has_content(){
  return !empty(apply_filters('the_content', get_the_content()));
}

template inside the loop:

<?php if ( $customQuery->have_posts() ) {?>
  <?php while ( $customQuery->have_posts() ) {
    $customQuery->the_post(); ?>
    <?php $the_content = apply_filters('the_content', get_the_content()); ?>
    <!-- html -->
    <?php if ( !empty($the_content) ) { ?>
      <div class="content">
        <?php echo $the_content; ?>
      </div>
    <?php } ?>
  <?php } ?>
  <?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
<?php } ?>

Answer 4

This also works, and tests for things like empty paragraph tags or   in the content which might cause a normal check to fail. See http://blog.room34.com/archives/5360 for the original idea - just recording it here so I can find it again. :O)

Put this in your functions.php:

function empty_content($str) {
    return trim(str_replace(' ','',strip_tags($str))) == '';
}

And put this where you want to run the check:

if (function_exists('empty_content') && empty_content($post->post_content)) { ... }

That will return true if the content is empty, false if not.