Tag: oEmbed (page 1 of 1)

I thought I broke my oEmbed discovery links but I had a more fundamental problem. I had broken fancy permalinks on my nginx configuration for a while and didn’t realize it.

I revisited the Nginx Codex page and did a stare and compare of my configuration and the examples there. I am sure I read that page in the past and my mistake was the “try_files” line.

Here’s what I had for try_files.

location / {
	try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
}

Here’s what that line should have read.

location / {
	try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}

See the “?$args” part? With that in place the non-post URLs work. The permalinks worked fine but things that were not to a post or page didn’t. Due to my fancy permalink settings my oEmbed discovery links had this format.

https://blog.dembowski.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url=urlencoded-data-here and that wasn’t being handled by my nginx configuration.

My plugin worked because I was replacing the fancy URLs with the regular non-fancy “?rest_route” version which nginx passed along to my WordPress installation just fine.

https://blog.dembowski.net/?rest_route=%2Foembed%2F1.0%2Fembed&url=urlencoded-data-here

This may have also broken other features as well. I wonder what else I’m missing? I should check all the things. 😉

One of the new WordPress 4.4 features is the ability for your installation to become an oEmbed provider. In plain English you can paste your post URL and get a result as if you were embedding a YouTube URL.

I could not get it to work for me. No way, no how. The json and XML discovery links were there in the post HTML but those links came back with “What? What? No. Go away, you’re bothering kid.”

It should have come back with a valid output and it did. It was a result, just not a functioning one.

For example, this post (which I’m not embedding) should provide via this link usable information. It doesn’t. I get this.

<link rel="alternate" type="application/json+oembed" href="https://blog.dembowski.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.dembowski.net%2F2015%2Fserver-admins-love-wp-cli%2F" />

That link results in this.

{"code":"rest_missing_callback_param","message":"Missing parameter(s): url","data":{"status":400,"params":["url"]}}

It doesn’t contain any useful data except to reply with “What? What? What?”

It should output this.

{"version":"1.0","provider_name":"Mostly Harmless","provider_url":"https:\/\/blog.dembowski.net","author_name":"Jan Dembowski","author_url":"https:\/\/blog.dembowski.net\/author\/jan\/","title":"Server admins love WP-CLI","type":"rich","width":600,"height":338,"html":"</pre>
<blockquote class="\&quot;wp-embedded-content\&quot;">
<a href="\&quot;https:\/\/blog.dembowski.net\/2015\/server-admins-love-wp-cli\/\&quot;">Server admins love WP-CLI<\/a><\/blockquote>\n<script type="text\/javascript">// <![CDATA[
\n<!--\/\/--><![CDATA[\/\/><!--\n\t\t!function(a,b){\"use strict\";function c(){if(!e){e=!0;var a,c,d,f,g=-1!==navigator.appVersion.indexOf(\"MSIE 10\"),h=!!navigator.userAgent.match(\/Trident.*rv:11\\.\/),i=b.querySelectorAll(\"iframe.wp-embedded-content\"),j=b.querySelectorAll(\"blockquote.wp-embedded-content\");for(c=0;c<j.length;c++)j[c].style.display=\"none\";for(c=0;c<i.length;c++)if(d=i[c],d.style.display=\"\",!d.getAttribute(\"data-secret\")){if(f=Math.random().toString(36).substr(2,10),d.src+=\"#?secret=\"+f,d.setAttribute(\"data-secret\",f),g||h)a=d.cloneNode(!0),a.removeAttribute(\"security\"),d.parentNode.replaceChild(a,d)}else;}}var d=!1,e=!1;if(b.querySelector)if(a.addEventListener)d=!0;if(a.wp=a.wp||{},!a.wp.receiveEmbedMessage)if(a.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(c){var d=c.data;if(d.secret||d.message||d.value)if(!\/[^a-zA-Z0-9]\/.test(d.secret)){var e,f,g,h,i,j=b.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret=\"'+d.secret+'\"]'),k=b.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret=\"'+d.secret+'\"]');for(e=0;e<k.length;e++)k[e].style.display=\"none\";for(e=0;e<j.length;e++)if(f=j[e],c.source===f.contentWindow){if(f.style.display=\"\",\"height\"===d.message){if(g=parseInt(d.value,10),g>1e3)g=1e3;else if(200>~~g)g=200;f.height=g}if(\"link\"===d.message)if(h=b.createElement(\"a\"),i=b.createElement(\"a\"),h.href=f.getAttribute(\"src\"),i.href=d.value,i.host===h.host)if(b.activeElement===f)a.top.location.href=d.value}else;}},d)a.addEventListener(\"message\",a.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),b.addEventListener(\"DOMContentLoaded\",c,!1),a.addEventListener(\"load\",c,!1)}(window,document);\n\/\/--><!]]>\n<\/script><iframe sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.dembowski.net\/2015\/server-admins-love-wp-cli\/embed\/\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" title=\"Embedded WordPress Post\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\"><\/iframe>","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/blog.dembowski.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/12\/wp-cli-rocks.png","thumbnail_width":600,"thumbnail_height":135}

Which is unreadable to you and I but to something looking to oEmbed your post it will look like this.

Server admins love WP-CLI

Nice huh? All neat in an iframe and easily embeddable. The output is customizable too and I plan to do that on my photo blog.

The oEmbed discovery links should just work but on my installations it doesn’t. I tried Apache2, nginx, clean installation with zero plugins and the Twenty Fifteen theme. Different servers too. I always got the wrong output and could not get oEmbed working.

During my troubleshooting I found a different URL that worked consistently for me. It’s the same information but with a filter I replaced the default output with one that worked for me.

Here’s the plugin code I used. The oembed_discovery_links is filterable (filters are cool) and I toss out the old links and replace them with my own.

This works for me but I do not like this solution.

The problem I have is that the normal links are not being replied to correctly via my WordPress installation. I don’t know why the default discovery links are not working. It bothers me, it really does. 😉

I’m convinced that there is something I’m doing wrong in my setup. Once I figure it out I’ll I can remove this plugin and I’ll post what I was missing.