Only display videos and images in the_content() within loop

Question

The issue I am trying to solve is within the WordPress loop, I only want video embeds or images to display, not any text.

Currently, when creating a new post (Standard format) in the WordPress editor, most of my posts look like this:

http://youtube.com/somevideo

Some supporting text below the video

And of course WordPress will then create an automatically embedded video using whatever YouTube or Vimeo link I put in there.

When displaying the list of posts, I do not want Some supporting text below the video to display, only the video.

Currently my content.php page is pretty basic and just displays the content using <?php the_content(); ?>

Is there a way to strip out this text on each post?

Answer 1

We can do that with the help of the get_media_embedded_in_content() function:

/**
 * Display only the first media item in the content
 *
 * @link http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/199398/26350
 */
! is_admin() && add_filter( 'the_content', function( $content )
{
    // Get the avialable media items from the content
    add_filter( 'media_embedded_in_content_allowed_types', 'wpse_media_types' );
    $media = get_media_embedded_in_content( $content );
    remove_filter( 'media_embedded_in_content_allowed_types', 'wpse_media_types' );

    // Only use the first media item if available 
    if( $media ) 
        $content = array_shift( $media );   

    return $content;
} , 99 );

where we can define our custom media types with:

function wpse_media_types( $types )
{
   return [ 'audio', 'video', 'object', 'embed', 'iframe', 'img' ];
}

Here's another approach where we extract all the urls from the content and check if it's an available oEmbed:

/**
 * Display only the first oEmbed in the content
 *
 * @link http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/199398/26350
 */
! is_admin() && add_filter( 'the_content', function( $content )
{
    require_once( ABSPATH . WPINC . '/class-oembed.php' );
    $wp_oembed = _wp_oembed_get_object();
    $urls = wp_extract_urls( $content );
    foreach( (array) $urls as $url )
    {
        if( $wp_oembed->get_provider( $url ) )
            $content = $url;
    }
    return $content;
}, 1 );

Note that you might want to add further restriction on where you want to use this.