urls - loop through posts and display inserted media and post title as a link

I'm fiddling around with an issue I cannot solve. Inside the loop I would like to find the URL of an inserted media file (pdf, doc etc) and display this as an anchor. Furthermore I would like to display the title of the current post as content of the link. My attempt so far:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> 
     <a href="<?php wp_get_attachment_url(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

displaying the title works totally fine. But the href="" does not show up anything. Thanks

Note: It is a media file simply inserted as post content, not a featured image or something.

I'm fiddling around with an issue I cannot solve. Inside the loop I would like to find the URL of an inserted media file (pdf, doc etc) and display this as an anchor. Furthermore I would like to display the title of the current post as content of the link. My attempt so far:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> 
     <a href="<?php wp_get_attachment_url(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

displaying the title works totally fine. But the href="" does not show up anything. Thanks

Note: It is a media file simply inserted as post content, not a featured image or something.

• loop
• urls
• attachments

Share Improve this question asked Oct 9, 2014 at 9:05 user49869user49869 17177 silver badges1616 bronze badges 14

• Is it not working with this solution? wordpress.stackexchange/questions/163795 – Robert hue Commented Oct 9, 2014 at 9:24
• @Roberthue it isn't :( and I didnt want to continue asking at all. – user49869 Commented Oct 9, 2014 at 9:26
• Okay, then I will let someone else help you with this. :) – Robert hue Commented Oct 9, 2014 at 9:27
• @Roberthue mate I tried the above code (this post) on a fresh install. And it does not work, but this is exactly what I want. – user49869 Commented Oct 9, 2014 at 9:28
• No it will not work. First wp_get_attachment_url() need the ID of the attachment to output URL which you are not providing and simply adding $id or $post->id will not work either because that will be post IDs, not the ID of the attachment(s). You will need a way to find all the attachments of a post & their IDs and then use each IDs in wp_get_attachment_url() to get URL. – Robert hue Commented Oct 9, 2014 at 9:35

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 1

I took a quick peek at the other question referenced in other comments, and the gist of how you loop through attachments there meshes with what is shown in the wp_get_attachment_image documentation example. In a nutshell, any attachments on a particular post will reference that post by ID.

In particular, it's crucial to understand that attachments are also posts themselves of the post type attachment. Inside your main loop, you'll get your attachments by running a nested query for all attachments whose post parent is equal to the ID of your outer loop's post:

// Our main (outer) query:
while(have_posts()) {
    the_post();

    $nested_query = new WP_Query(array(
        "post_type" => "attachment",
        "post_status" => "inherit",
        "posts_per_page" => -1,
        "post_parent" => get_the_ID()  // attachments belonging to the post we're looking at
    ));
    $attachments = $nested_query->get_posts();  // get an array of post objects for each attachment
    foreach($attachments as $att_post) {
        printf("<a href='%s'>%s</a>", wp_get_attachment_url($att_post->ID), get_the_title());
    }
}

I doubt the above does what you want it to, primarily because I don't think you want to echo an anchor for every single attachment that has the post title for its text. However, for illustrative purposes, this is how you could loop through attachments nested within a post loop.