Passing variables to new page

Question

I'm trying to pass the variables to a new page, I made a function in my theme to get the results. Now when I use yelplist(); on the front page of my theme it gets the results and when i click on the link it passes the image and city back to me as requested.

Questions:

• However I am wondering what i can do to have variables pass to their own page. For example: if I click on the name, a new page comes with the results of an image and a city for that link.
• Also is it possible to have it done in the single.php file, or will it be a completely new page/file?

Update 1

*I've made a little bit of progress using $_SESSIONS, I am now able to pass the variables into the single.php file however, when I click on the link thats suppose to grab the results from the current link it does not update the variables that are in the single.php file, instead its only getting the last parsed link's info instead of the one I am clicking on.

Also when I click on the link at the bottom and make it try to go to the single.php file I get a object not found <a href='single.php?p=$pizza_url'><img border=0 src='".$business->photo_url."'></a> what can I do to make it go to the single page and update the variables?

this is what I have in my functions file.

function yelplist(){

require_once ('/lib/OAuth.php'); 
require_once ('yelp.php'); 
require_once(ABSPATH.'/wp-admin/includes/taxonomy.php');

$yelpstring = file_get_contents('http://api.yelp.com/business_review_search?term=pizza&location=Los%20Angeles&ywsid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx');
$obj = json_decode($yelpstring);

        foreach($obj->businesses as $business):
            $business->photo_url;
            $pizza_name = $business->url;
            $business->name;
            $business->phone;
            $city = $business->city;

            $url = ''.$business->url.'';
            $pizza = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH);
            $pizza_url = trim(''.$pizza.'','/biz');
            $lower_case_city_url = $city;
            $lower_case_city_url = strtolower($lower_case_city_url);
            $city_url = str_replace(' ','-',$lower_case_city_url);

            if(isset($_SESSION['p']) && $_SESSION['p']==''.$pizza_url.'') {

            $_SESSION['pizza_name']= $business->name; 
            $_SESSION['pizza_city']= $city = $business->city; 
            $_SESSION['pizza_phone']= $business->phone;
            $_SESSION['pizza_photo'] = $business->photo_url;

        }else{

        echo "<div><a href='?p=$pizza_url'>$business->name</a></div>";
            }
        endforeach;
        }

this is what im using in the single.php file to grab the results.

<?php session_start(); ?>
<?php echo $_SESSION['pizza_name']; ?> </br>
<?php echo $_SESSION['pizza_phone']; ?></br>
<?php echo $_SESSION['pizza_city']; ?></br>
<?php echo "<img border=0 src=".$_SESSION['pizzaphoto'].">"; ?>

Thanks

Answer 1

Edit: OK, I get what you're trying to do a little better. This should help get you there.

1. Cache the data that you are going to want. You'll go over your API limit quickly if you query Yelp on every page load - not to mention slowing your site down terribly.

   function yelplist() {
   
       $pizza_joints = wp_cache_get( 'pizza-joints' );
   
       if ( !$pizza_joints ) {
   
           require_once ('/lib/OAuth.php'); 
           require_once ('yelp.php'); 
           require_once(ABSPATH.'/wp-admin/includes/taxonomy.php');
   
           $yelpstring = file_get_contents('http://api.yelp.com/business_review_search?term=pizza&location=Los%20Angeles&ywsid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx');
   
           $obj = json_decode($yelpstring);
   
           $pizza_joints = array();
   
           foreach( $obj->businesses as $business ) {
   
               $path = trim( '' . parse_url($business->url, PHP_URL_PATH) . '', '/biz' );
               $pizza_joints[ $path ] = $business;
   
           }
   
           wp_cache_set( 'pizza-joints', $pizza_joints );
   
       }
   
       return $pizza_joints;
   
   }
   

2. Create a page for your single pizza joint reviews and set up a custom page template for it. Keep track of the page ID for that page. I'll say for the rest of my examples that this page has an ID of 50 and the page template its using is single-pizza.php.

3. ON your front page: when you want to link to individual pizza joint pages, link to that page with an additional variable passed reflecting the individual joint you want to show. Use the function add_query_arg to generate the url to pass that variable:

   $pizza_joints = yelplist();
   
   foreach ( $pizza_joints as $path => $pizza_joint ) {
   
       echo '<p><a href="' 
           . add_query_arg( 'pizza', $path, get_permalink( 50 ) )
           . '">' . $pizza_joint->name . '</a></p>';
   
   }
   

4. Now when that link is clicked, the viewer will go to the page defined by the template single-pizza.php. In that template, you can access the variable passed by checking the contents of $_GET['pizza'].

   /*
   
   Template Name: Single Pizza Joint Data
   
   */
   
   $pizza_joints = yelplist();
   
   if ( isset( $_GET['pizza'] ) &&  array_key_exists( $_GET['pizza'], $pizza_joints ) ) {
   
       $this_business = $pizza_joints[ $_GET['pizza'] ];
   
       echo '<img src="' . $this_business->photo_url .'">';
       echo '<h2>' . $this_business->name .'</h2>';
       echo '<h4>' . $this_business->phone .'</h2>';
   
   } else { 
   
       // either no variable was passed, or it doesn't match a business in the list
   
       wp_redirect( home_url() );
   
           }
   

Answer 2

Could this be as easy as resetting the variable once we've hit the page with the query string?

Say something like this at the top of single.php would reset the pizza url upon hitting the page:

<?php $_SESSION['pizza_url'] = $_GET['p']; ?>

And if you had pretty permalinks enabled and weren't able to use the $_GET string, you could grab the query variables like so:

<?php $_SESSION['pizza_url'] = get_query_var('p'); ?>

This isn't going to get you all the way there, but I think I'm just beginning to understand your question, but I hope we can arrive at a conclusion that works for you. Keep me posted.