Escaping Shortcode Examples

Shortcodes

Normally when a shortcode is used, it would trigger the WordPress magic that makes a shortcode a short code:

trigger
content

Now, if we wanted to show what shortcode was used to make that magic happen, we simply need to escape it like so:
[[expand title=”trigger”]content[/expand]]
and that renders:
[expand title="trigger"]content[/expand]

we can even wrap it in a nice code tag to set it apart:
[expand title="trigger"]content[/expand]

so far so good.

HTML

Now lets say we want to escape a bit of HTML! Well, lets first try simply wrapping it in the code tag:

  • item 1
  • item 2
  • item 3

Hmm… no good. All that seems to have done is render the HTML in the special css of a code tag.

What about using Markdown! Let’s wrap the HTML in backticks and see what happens…

<ul>
<li>item 1</li>
<li>item 2</li>
<li>item 3</li>
</ul>

Perfect! It even added that monospace font that makes code look even more code-like.

Now for the test…

Shortcode and HTML

Since we are using HTML we need to use Markup… what happens when we add in the shortcode?

<ul>
<li>item 1</li>
<li>item 2

trigger
content
</li>
<li>item 3</li>
</ul>

The HTML looks rockin’ but the shortcode… well that was just processed as normal. Hmm… lets try doing the double bracket thing:

<ul>
<li>item 1</li>
<li>item 2 [expand title="trigger"]content[/expand]</li>
<li>item 3</li>
</ul>

Wow! that totally worked. So there you have it: Problem solved!