Retrive images from the_content()

Question

I would like to get the images from the_content(), I know I could use a regex to get the images but I wanted to know if there is any other more 'wordpress way' for doing this?

I have this within a plugin and I have a filter

 add_filter('the_content', 'myTestContentFunction');

Thank you

Answer 1

There are essentially three criteria here:

• do images belong to the site (are WP attachments)
• are images attached to this post
• are images used in this post

This has side effects, like:

• images used in post are not necessarily attachments
• post's attachments aren't necessarily used in that post

So the only reliable way to produce complete set of images, actually used in specific post's content is indeed to parse the content (after shortcodes like galleries and embeds) for them.

After that you can [try] reverse engineer URLs into WP's attachments, see Turn a URL into an Attachment / Post ID for example.

Answer 2

You can use the get_attached_media(), function. I have linked the above to the Codex.

P.S This is not my own code, straight from the WordPress Codex:

<ul>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();    

 $args = array(
   'post_type' => 'attachment',
   'numberposts' => -1,
   'post_status' => null,
   'post_parent' => $post->ID
  );

  $attachments = get_posts( $args );
     if ( $attachments ) {
        foreach ( $attachments as $attachment ) {
           echo '<li>';
           echo wp_get_attachment_image( $attachment->ID, 'full' );
           echo '<p>';
           echo apply_filters( 'the_title', $attachment->post_title );
           echo '</p></li>';
          }
     }

 endwhile; endif; ?>
</ul>

EDIT

You could try something like this:

function get_attached_images() {
global $post;
$post_id = $post->ID;
$media = get_attached_media( 'image', $post_id );
}