What is the difference between get_post_permalink and get_permalink?

Question

I've read the documentation on get_post_permalink() and get_permalink() and don't understand the difference between the two. It might be because I don't understand the purpose of the $leavename and $sample parameters. Can anyone explain those, and when one function would be more useful than the other? Thanks!

Answer 1

The get_post_permalink() funciton fetches the link to a post depending on its "permanent" link plus your custom rewrite rules that changes ?p=123 into for e.g. my-beautiful-sunday-diary. The get_permalink() function is more "basic" but as well more versatile in what it does: For a post_type of

• page, it uses get_page_link()
• attachment, it uses get_attachment_link()
• post, it uses get_post_link()

It also handles the display of terms like category and date permalinks. At the end, it either replaces the "pretty" link in your home_url() or just returns the raw link if no custom rewrite rules were assigned. Finally it attaches a generic filter:

/**
 * Filters the permalink for a post.
 *
 * Only applies to posts with post_type of 'post'.
 *
 * @since 1.5.0
 *
 * @param string  $permalink The post's permalink.
 * @param WP_Post $post      The post in question.
 * @param bool    $leavename Whether to keep the post name.
 */
return apply_filters( 'post_link', $permalink, $post, $leavename );

Hope that clarifies the topic.

ProTip: If you need to change peramlinks in a plugin, go with the specific filters inside get_attachment_link(), get_post_link(), etc. Only if you are either working on a single site and are not planning to distribute your code or if you are writing a plugin targetting only rewrite stuff, then go with the generic filter above. Else you will nuke every theme authors efforts and start a callback priority race.

Answer 2

Someone else will certainly explain better than me. As I only use get_permalink()

They are mostly similar as they both return the post permalink, get_permalink use get_post_permalink (for post_types) and can be filter. It will also be use to retrieve a page link, attachment... where get_post_permalink seems to be dedicated to post_types.

EDIT:

About the use of $leavename, it's look like there is no need for a front-end (and even in the back-end) use as it return the permastructure slug, according to the post type of the link.

 echo get_permalink(123, true);

Return the rewrite schema for the link, that could be use

A post:

 http://example.com/%postname%/

A product:

 http://example.com/%product%/

$leavename is use in the get_permalink() in the $rewritecode array and put as first paramater in the function line 221

$permalink = home_url( str_replace($rewritecode, $rewritereplace, $permalink) );

It can be usefull to discover the rewrite slug for a link for a developper (but I think there a better way to do this)

Hope someone will give more details.