evaluate if next_posts_link() will return results

Have you had any luck finding a solution? I was wanting to do something similar but so far haven’t been able to figure out a solution. I have been trying to figure out how to write a custom function to include in my themes functions.php file but so far it is no good.

This is what I need to know too. I want to display greyed out “Next Page” if there are no more pages left so that people can see that they are on the last page.

Sorry to dig up an old post, but I have the same question/issue.

I want to know if there are any previous or next posts…what is the easiest way to do this?

If there were a way to suppress the output of the calls like this:

$older = next_posts_link('« Older Entries');
$newer = previous_posts_link('Newer Entries »');
$show_nav = FALSE;
if (strlen($older) > 0 || strlen($newer) > 0) {
    $show_nav = TRUE;
}

That would be fine too. Basically, in addition to have_posts(), it would be nice to have a posts_count() or something like that.

I don’t have time to work on it right now but I do think I can make a solution. I ended up changing my theme so that it wasn’t needed but I will try to whip something up this weekend now that I know how to slap WP around a little better. If you don’t feel like waiting then just check out the code in ‘/wp-includes/link-template.php’. If you know some PHP it should be easy enough to create a custom function based off of the code they use in the previous_posts_link, next_post_link, and posts_nav_link functions.

@twistedtech – Thanks for the tip!

I was able to throw something together that fit my needs…I’m thinking I might even create a plugin. I’ll post back here with my solution.

-Eric

I really think that a plug-in is overkill when a couple of custom functions included in your theme’s functions.php file could be used instead. Especially since this is such a theme specific thing.

Good point =) I’ve posted my solution. I’m not sure if it is the right/best way to do it, but it works for me!

Well that looks like it would work. My thought was to just create a function that would return true or false based on if there was a next or previous link, but I didn’t have time to work on it this weekend. Not sure what this week is going to be like at work so I may have a chance to hack something up over the next few days. I think it is doable with a single function and 20 line of code or less, but I need to setup a test blog first so I don’t have to mess around with my live one.

Well, I thought about what you said and have added a different solution. Basically, I decided, for paged entries, to just check $wp_query->max_num_posts to determine if there was more than 1 page.

I also removed the check for single posts, since, in my case, there will always be a next or previous post.

Thanks again for your input.

Here’s my solution. Pretty verbose, but I wanted to avoid the performance overhead of eval();*

function dr_previous_posts_link() {
	ob_start();
	previous_posts_link('&laquo; <i>newer</i>');
	$buffer = ob_get_contents();
	ob_end_clean();
	if(!empty($buffer)) echo "<h4 class=\"posts_nav\">$buffer</h4>";
}

function dr_next_posts_link() {
	ob_start();
	next_posts_link('&raquo; <i>older</i>');
	$buffer = ob_get_contents();
	ob_end_clean();
	if(!empty($buffer)) echo "<h4 class=\"posts_nav\">$buffer</h4>";
}

*Using eval(); you could do something like this:

function if_echo($code_string) {
	ob_start();
	eval($code_string);
	$buffer = ob_get_contents();
	ob_end_clean();
	if(!empty($buffer)) echo $buffer;
}

With something like this in a template:

<?php if_echo('next_posts_link()'); ?>

On second thought, here’s a better solution:

function dr_previous_posts_link($label = '', $pre = '', $post = '') {
	ob_start();
	previous_posts_link($label);
	$buffer = ob_get_contents();
	ob_end_clean();
	if(!empty($buffer)) echo $pre,$buffer,$post;
}

function dr_next_posts_link($label = '', $pre = '', $post = '') {
	ob_start();
	next_posts_link($label);
	$buffer = ob_get_contents();
	ob_end_clean();
	if(!empty($buffer)) echo $pre,$buffer,$post;
}

Then call them like this:

<?php dr_previous_posts_link('&laquo; <i>newer</i>', '<h4 class="posts_nav">', '</h4>'); ?>
<?php dr_next_posts_link('<i>older</i> &raquo;', '<h4 class="posts_nav">', '</h4>'); ?>