get_page_by_title() doesnt work if title has an apostrophe ( ‘ )

Hi Nicole,

May I ask, why do you need to use the get_page_by_title() function? I mean, what will you do with the value returned by that function?

I’m wondering if there would be an alternative solution for your use case.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Regards,
Paulo

Hi Paulo,

The reason I need to use get_page_by_title() is that this is a highly complex site and there is a need for two different views of essentially the same post content on two different URL’s. This need was covered in an earlier topic I started here: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/multiple-views-of-a-single-post/

So we have one master post in a custom post type (lets call it A) which has the main post content and all the custom fields and custom meta data required for that post. It is a complex post with a lot of data.

Then we have a duplicate of that post created via export and import of just the title in a different custom post type (lets call it B). This has the same post title. Then in the single template to display this post we are pulling most of the content from the master post of the same title in post type A using the get_page_by_title() function.

The end result is two quite different single post views like this:
ourdomain.com/posttype-A/our-post-title
ourdomain.com/posttype-B/our-post-title

I cannot think of another better way to do this. I really just need get_page_by_title() to actually work ??

Hi Nicole,

Thank you for the detailed information, I now have a better understanding of what you intend to achieve.

However, I’m confused by something you said in your original post above:

That isn’t going to work as the path (post slug) isn’t always the same as the sanitized title.

Does this mean that the slug of posttype-B will change so that you have something like the following?

ourdomain.com/posttype-A/our-post-title
ourdomain.com/posttype-B/our-post-title-changed

If yes, wouldn’t this mean that the post title also changed, and so that you wouldn’t be able to to use get_page_by_title() either? I must admin I’m a bit confused.

===

I think, ultimately, what you want is to establish a relationship between a post and their “parent”. In your example above, posttype-B/our-post-title is a “child” of posttype-A/our-post-title.

Currently, you’re establishing this relationship implicitly through the title of the post, which is giving you problems due to the behavior of the get_page_by_title() function. Another implicit way to establish the relationship, would be through the slug, but this might not be an option if the slug can change (as mentioned above).

Alternatively, you could establish the relationship explicitly, by requiring that a “child” page has a parent. There are multiple ways to do this, with the simpler one probably being to use the “parent page” attribute: https://wordpress.com/support/pages/page-options/#parent-page.

For each “child” page, you would explicitly select the “master” page as their parent. You would then, instead of using get_page_by_title() to retrieve the parent page, just use the parent attribute that has been explicitly selected for the current page.

I hope this helps you. I realize this is not an answer to this thread’s topic (get_page_by_title() doesn’t work if title has an apostrophe), but I think it could be a solid solution to your problem.

Regards,
Paulo

Hi Paulo,

Thanks for your lengthy reply.

Yes your understanding that the slug might change is correct. However the post title and the slug are independant of each other so the post titles could remain the same even if the slug format was changed.
get_page_by_title() should work as long as the post titles are the same regardless of the slug.

One post is not a child of the other as they are in two different post types. They are not two posts in the same post type which is heirarchical and thus supports parent and child relationships. It would not work to set them up this way as then they would all be in the one post type which does not create the desired functionality.

Ultimately I’m not looking for a workaround for get_page_by_title(). I know how to achieve that… I could set up a custom field on the B post to enter the post ID of the master A post and create a relationship that way. However that is extra work for each and every post and it should not be necessary to do that at all given there is a function get_page_by_title() which theorhetically does exactly what we need more efficiently… unless there are special characters!

So how can we just make get_page_by_title() actually work as it should rather than looking for hacky workarounds?

Hi Nicole, sorry for being late to the party.

I’m not sure if you have resolved your issue or not yet.

Have you tried using the PHP function html_entity_decode on the title before passing it into the get_page_by_title function?

Something like this:

$decoded_title = html_entity_decode( $post_title );
$post = get_page_by_title( $decoded_title, OBJECT, 'post' );