id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc
21995	(get/the)_archive_title and (get/the)_archive_description functions	thomask		"Current theme archive got problem with complexity - archive template is used for taxonomy, category, tag, author, date and custom post types archives and every type of archive got special function for showing title and special function for showing description.

So now theme developers fight with two evils - one very big archive.php file with a lot of conditions, or tons of separate simple .php files for each archive type. See #21951 for example.

Other problem of current solution is that templates are not future-proof - when new archive types are added, archive.php must be rewritten.

My idea is to create 2 simple functions (+ 2 echoing)
get_archive_title + the_archive_title
get_archive_description + the_archive_description

in those function would be all the complexity, which is now in the template, plus the filter, so something like


{{{
function get_archive_title() {
if ( is_day() ) {
	$title = sprintf( __( 'Daily Archives: %s' ), '<span>' . get_the_date() . '</span>' );
} elseif ( is_month() ) {
	$title = sprintf( __( 'Monthly Archives: %s' ), '<span>' . get_the_date( _x( 'F Y', 'monthly archives date format' ) ) . '</span>' );
} elseif ( is_year() ) {
	$title = sprintf( __( 'Yearly Archives: %s' ), '<span>' . get_the_date( _x( 'Y', 'yearly archives date format' ) ) . '</span>' );
} elseif ( is_tag() ) {
	$title = sprintf( __( 'Tag Archives: %s' ), '<span>' . single_tag_title( '', false ) . '</span>' );
} elseif ( is_category() ) {
	$title = sprintf( __( 'Category Archives: %s' ), '<span>' . single_cat_title( '', false ) . '</span>' );
} elseif ( is_post_type_archive() ) {
	$title =  sprintf( __( 'Archives: %s' ), '<span>' . post_type_archive_title( '', false ) . '</span>' );
} else {
	$title = _e( 'Blog Archives' );
}
return ( add_filter ( 'get_archive_title', $title ) );
}
}}}

(imo it could be a bit more complex, so that we could add a param to this function for simple rewritting the title for some particular type without filtering whole output)

Finally the archive template would be as simple as


{{{
<header class=""archive-header"">
<h1 class=""archive-title""><?php the_archive_title() ?></h1>

<div class=""archive-meta""><?php the_archive_description ?></div>

</header><!-- .archive-header -->
}}}

this way we will get all we need
1. one archive file
2. very short file without any conditions
3. easy to filter the output
4. future-proof as when adding new wp archive type, the function would be updated

Of course, for backwards compatibility of current themes, this function can be copied to the theme functions.php as well with !if (function_exist(
'get_archive_title'))"	feature request	new	normal	3.6	Template		normal		has-patch dev-feedback	knut@… xoodrew@… justin@… charles@… wordpress@… lightningspirit@… info@… BandonRandon