Find all strings between an enclosing shortcode

Question

I want to look for all strings in my theme located between my enclosing shortcode [question] desired string [/question].

Then I want to output the so collected strings somewhere in my theme , e.g. listing all those questions and linking them each to their containing post.

The idea behind is that I am building a wordpress blog where I write down all the things i learned in blog posts. basically so far for myself. When I have questions about a certain topic I wanna note them down in the blog post between those tags. To find and answer the questions afterwards I want to use this filter function.

So far I was able to get one string between the shortcode using the Options API and this code. But it only lets me save one question at a time while I want to store all strings that are located between [question][/question] shortcodes. Floemi suggested using the Settings API. I am trying to get my head around but there might be a more semantic solution to this.

 function question_shortcode($atts, $content = null ) {
    global $question_shortcode_text;
    $question_shortcode_text = $content;
    echo "<h2 class='question'>" . $question_shortcode_text . "</h2>";
    update_option( 'question_shortcode_option', $question_shortcode_text );
};
add_action( 'save_post', 'question_shortcode' );

add_filter( 'the_content', 'testing_var');
function testing_var( $content ) {
    $question_from_shortcode = get_option( 'question_shortcode_option' );
    $content = $question_from_shortcode . $content; 
    return $content;
}

add_shortcode( 'question', 'question_shortcode' );

Answer 1

Basic idea of how this could be done:

• Hook into save_post or something else which is regularly run, but only by you (could get resource intensive otherwise)
• Parse your content and have a look for your shortcodes. The Shortcode API could come in handy here.
• If you found your shortcode, save the text between your shortcode and the Post ID, probably by using the Options API the Settings API
• Provide a special template/shortcode on your overview page, which reads those options and uses get_permalink() to build links to your pages

This should help you for further researching.