WPBuzzer WordPress Plugin Workaround

16. Feb, 2010 5 Comments

Google Buzz just launch last February 9, 2010 and I am surprised how viral as it spread the web. A day after I noticed Mashable has a Buzz button in their post so that a reader can easily add the article to their buzz stream. So I hit google hoping that there is a plugin like this for wordpress. I see a couple of plugins available and I choose WPBuzzer because of the stat counter that can be displayed if you have bit.ly api. I download the plugin and install it in my blog, but unfortunately it doesnt work. It is because of the function file_get_contents which is disabled in my host.

So I decided to experiment the code to have it work in my host or possibly make it works for everybody wants this plugin. So heres the code I have come up.

Code below is the function that gets stats from the bit.ly service. Noticed that it uses file_get_contents function to get the data.

function wpbuzzer_get_bitlycount($shorturl,$login,$appkey)
{
	// Bit.ly api call
	$bitly = 'http://api.bit.ly/stats?version=2.0.1&shortUrl='.urlencode($shorturl).'&login='.$login.'&apiKey='.$appkey.'&format=json';

	// Get the stats
	$response = file_get_contents($bitly);

        // parse json and return the URL
	$json = @json_decode($response,true);
        if (array_key_exists('results', $json)) {
	    return $json['results']['clicks'];
        } else {
            return false;
        }

}

This is the workaround I came up. Instead of the file_get_contents I uses the CURL library to get the data. 

function wpbuzzer_get_bitlycount($shorturl,$login,$appkey)
{
	// Bit.ly api call
	$bitly = 'http://api.bit.ly/stats?version=2.0.1&shortUrl='.urlencode($shorturl).'&login='.$login.'&apiKey='.$appkey.'&format=json';

	// Get the stats
	//$response = file_get_contents($bitly);

        $ch = curl_init($bitly);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        $output = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);

        $response = $output;

        // parse json and return the URL
	$json = @json_decode($response,true);
        if (array_key_exists('results', $json)) {
	    return $json['results']['clicks'];
        } else {
            return false;
        }

}

Is this the right solution? or is this one is less secure compare to the original code?

Download the original plugin from hameedullah site. And you can try the one I have edited.

I have sent an email to the original author on this plugin if he could do the fix.

PG

Author: insic

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5 Responses to “WPBuzzer WordPress Plugin Workaround”

  1. Mohammed Arif Reply 17. Feb, 2010 at 11:16 am

    After installing it, I don’t see the counter of Buzz.

    Just check that out on my blog at http://www.mohammedarif.com

    Thanks
    Mohammed Arif

  2. göğüs estetiği Reply 17. Feb, 2010 at 6:56 pm

    Great article. There is a lot of good information here, though I did want to let you know something – I am running Redhat with the latest beta of Firefox, and the look and feel of your blog is kind of bizarre for me. I can read the articles, but the navigation doesnt function so great.

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