#8: get_the_generator_{$type}

The get_the_generator_{$type} filter allows you to modify the generator meta tag provided by WordPress in certain contexts.

It is evaluated in get_the_generator() in the wp-includes/general-template.php file.

get_the_generator_{$type} is a dynamic filter, meaning part of the filter tag changes based on the context. It accepts 2 arguments:

  1. string $gen The generator meta tag
  2. string $type The generator type

The dynamic portion of the filter tag, $type accepts html, xhtml (default), atom, rss2, rdf, comment, or export. When you add your filter, the tag takes the form of get_the_generator_html or get_the_generator_xhtml and so on.

Example:

Sometimes people will use a filter to disable the generator tag altogether, termed “security by obscurity”. The following example instead tries to have a little fun with the generator tag by replacing the WordPress version number with its corresponding jazz musician! We’ll filter on the default xhtml context.

Have a suggested improvement? You can fork the Gist and comment back with the link. If all is agreeable, I’ll merge in your changes. Crowd-sourced documentation FTW!

4 thoughts on “#8: get_the_generator_{$type}

  1. This is a great project, thank you for your work on this.

    If I could just offer one suggestion, it would be to use a function prefix in your sample code, like for example fotd_. So the above function would then be named fotd_mess_with_the_generator.

    I know that this is just demonstration code, but unfortunately a lot of people just copy-paste the whole thing and just change the innards of the function, not the rest. So this is why I think it would be best to write as you would for a real project, even if it is just sample code.

    This is something I would like to see being used consistently in the Codex and other tutorials as well.

    • That’s a pretty valid point. I generally try to use a fake textdomain to promote responsible localization, so I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that I should be prefixing in this context as well.

      I’ll have to figure out what prefix I could use instead of ‘fotd’. Maybe ‘docs’ or something — mostly so I don’t have to re-prefix when examples get transferred to the Codex/Code Reference in the future.

  2. Week 1 Recap: Filters 1-12 – Filters of the Day

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