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Oliver Williams
6,278 Pointscomment_form array
I have copy and pasted some code. It works but I don't understand why it works. One of the default arguments for comment_form() is an array called $fields. I can understand how easy it is to overwrite or unset elements of this array. However, $fields does not have a comment_notes_before key so why does this code work? $fields has only email, url and author key/values.
function change_up($fields) { $fields['comment_notes_before'] = '<p class="comment-notes">All fields are mandatory.</p>'; return $fields; } add_filter('comment_form_defaults','change_up');
2 Answers
Joel Bardsley
31,249 PointsYou'll see here that the first parameter for comment_form() is an array, which you've named $fields. By default, wordpress refers to this array as $args.
If you scroll down the Codex Reference to see the default field values for $args, you'll see that 'fields' is a key as well as 'comment_notes_before' (among many others). $args['fields'] (or $fields['fields'] in your case) contains the email, url and author key/values.
So really you do have access to 'comment_notes_before' as well as the other default keys shown in the reference. Hopefully you can understand better how your pasted code works now.
Oliver Williams
6,278 PointsThank you! Such a clear answer to something I was finding overly confusing! Is there any difference between passing an array of arguments directly into a function like comment_form() and using a filter? I don't understand why you might use one rather than the other and they both seem to do the same thing.