Aggregate Thumbnail Images

Description

WordPress Plugin

WordPress Plugin to expose images based on tag or category. This plugin is intended to be used by themes or other plugins to provide a visual representation of tags and categories.

Shell Script

A shell script aggregate-thumbnail-images.sh is provided to create a thumbnail images based on the API output

• chmod +x aggregate-thumbnail-images.sh
• ./aggregate-thumbnail-images.sh --taxonomy=tag --name=swimming will generate the image wherever you invoke the script.
• Requirements
• • bash for running the script
• • jq for parsing JSON
• • curl for making HTTP requests
• • convert from ImageMagick for image manipulation
• • add a file called .aggregate-thumbnail-images in your home directory with the website url

The Issue

Tags and Images don't have a default visual identity, it would be nice to have a visual representation of the tags and images for usage in CSS or maybe for usage of og:image based on the Featured Images for the posts in that category.

Usage of WordPress Plugin

• Install the plugin to wp-content/plugins/aggregate-thumbnail-images
• Access the endpoint at /wp-json/aggregate-thumbnail-images/v1/category/{id} or /wp-json/aggregate-thumbnail-images/v1/tag/{id} where {id} is the ID of the category or tag.
• Access the endpoint at /wp-json/aggregate-thumbnail-images/v1/categoryByName/{name} or /wp-json/aggregate-thumbnail-images/v1/tagByName/{name} where {name} is the name of the category or tag.

Example GET request

curl -X GET "https://example.org/wp-json/aggregate-thumbnail-images/v1/tag/1" -H  "accept: application/json"

Example response:

{
  "images": [
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/C1EFF7E7-4212-43ED-A49C-89B816FB0137.jpeg",
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/EFECCA90-C40A-4D83-B197-64D7E1A36642.jpeg",
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9C70C70A-062A-4676-9476-D88AF6C54643.jpg",
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/DBE9CDDD-6E9F-4CB9-832D-A79235CB1857-scaled.jpg",
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/CDE4CFFA-BE80-4328-BF85-5779D777EC8F.jpeg",
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/0B9EF9A0-4BD4-416A-ADD5-803B4BD7A77A.jpeg",
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/E9D7FE0B-5EED-4B19-91D1-09BBB57FBC6E-scaled.jpg",
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/24C4253D-CA87-44C2-B239-F609A080CAAD.jpeg",
    "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CF0F9EDA-6D4E-4C24-A468-3076C71FF607-scaled.jpg"
  ],
  "filename": "tag_swim2024_600x600.jpg",
  "exists": {
    "path": "https://example.org/wp-content/uploads/aggregate-thumbnail-images/tag_swim2024_600x600.jpg",
    "file_exists": false
  }
}

History

1.0.0:

• Initial version provides an endpoint under the WP REST API to get the available featured images for categories or tags.
• Added a shell script to consume the api and generate the image based on the output.

1.0.1:

• convert no longer works the way it did, ImageMagick prefers magick so switched the shell script to use magick for convert then montage to combine the images.

Goals

• Make those images or allow WordPress users to compose images for tags and categories or both
• In other words, make that file_exists be able to return true and mean it.
• Assess security implications
• Assess performance implications
• Assess usability
• Add some unit testing

Potential directions

• Add a way to do this for a page based on child pages featured images
• Add a way to add a logo to the images
• Add a way to add a background image to the images
• Add a way to add a gradient to the images
• Add a way to add a pattern to the images

Want to help?

• Feel free to fork and submit a PR
• Have a suggestion? Open an issue

Contributors

• Joe Crawford