Update cat base to handle redirects properly

[chuckreynolds]

Updated to handle redirects properly.
It was doing /blog/category/foocat/ => /foocat and 404'ing... This patch should handle all/most? (test) redirects accordingly; example /blog/category/foocat/ => /blog/foocat/

[sybrew]

Thanks for the PR!

Question: Why are we testing is_main_site() here?

Perhaps we should use home_url( '/' ) and let WordPress figure out the base, instead of using get_option( 'home' ) (at line 111).

[chuckreynolds]

why is_main_site()... idk. kinda vibe coded it while drinking on vacation :) (only time i have to work on non-work stuff) Probably don't need that. GPT4.1 probably saw

tsf-snippets/permalinks/tsf-remove-category-base.php

Line 127 in 9803737

$blog_prefix = \is_main_site() && str_starts_with( $permalink_structure, '/blog/' )

in modify_category_rewrite_rules() and duped that functionality.
It also feels a little 'hard coded' to the use case of .tld/blog/**

[chuckreynolds]

New way to handle it. Getting cat url/slug instead as it already is handled correctly so may as well use that instead of recalcing what the slug should be. @sybrew

Edit 1: That said I still think this in modify_category_rewrite_rules() is hard-fixed to /blog/ being in the permalink structure.

$blog_prefix = \is_main_site() && str_starts_with( $permalink_structure, '/blog/' )
    ? 'blog/'
    : '';

That'd need to be tackled if this were to be released more publicly.

Edit 2: Looking at YxxSEO plugin that's what they have; so is_multisite came from that too in /inc/class-rewrite.php

$permalink_structure = get_option( 'permalink_structure' );

$blog_prefix = '';
if ( strpos( $permalink_structure, '/blog/' ) === 0 ) {
	if ( ( is_multisite() && ! is_subdomain_install() ) || is_main_site() || is_main_network() ) {
		$blog_prefix = 'blog/';
	}
}

[sybrew]

Never do this! 404s are good. I smell a bit too much vibe 😅

[sybrew]

This function already exists in Core: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_category_by_slug/. It's heavy, though. If possible, I'd rather trim out the slug outright instead of performing category lookups.
In other words, we probably just want to modify the rewrite base so that /%category%/ disappears.

[chuckreynolds]

Have at it... you're a better coder than me most likely... i'm out of the game mostly lol. Too much dust for me to knock off to code full-time anymore. I just want a solution that's solid and can be shared back to the community for everybody to use.

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR updates the category base removal plugin to handle category redirects more accurately by using the category's slug to fetch the proper link.

• Updated plugin version from 1.0.0 to 1.0.2
• Revised redirect logic in redirect_base() to use get_category_by_slug() for fetching the category link and added a fallback redirect
• Introduced a helper function get_category_by_slug()

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

permalinks/tsf-remove-category-base.php:120

• Consider adding a detailed docblock for get_category_by_slug, documenting the expected type of the parameter and the return value to clarify its usage.

function get_category_by_slug( $slug ) {

[sybrew]

Well, that was a waste of $390 🥲, I thought Copilot would consider our conversation and amend the commit accordingly.

[sybrew]

I'll look at this again later (I'm extremely swamped) -- if I were confident that this feature would be foolproof, it'd have been implemented in TSF a long time ago.

Due to performance issues I mentioned in the review, I'm skeptical about the PR as it stands, even though the suggestion you're making could make it much more robust.

I'll keep this PR open for now, because it does solve a problem, though I need to get my head into it to figure out if it's the best and the only solution. Tweaking is necessary, such as removing the fallback redirect, but that can always happen later.