WordPress: more_posts, old_posts, new_posts

I just scratched an itch I've had for a long time. I always hate how on my category pages and my archive pages the little "More Posts" box would display even if there were no posts. Also, I could never check and see if there were no "Newer" or no "Older" posts so I could still print the words out in non-link form.

I finally did something about it today. I started by looking through the codex, and finding nothing. So I started digging through the WP code looking for the posts_nav_link() which sorta did what I wanted, but just echoed to the page instead of returning. I found it in wp-includes/template-functions-links.php and started chopping it up.

In the end I came up with three functions for my 'my-hacks.php' file. I didn't want to spend the time making it into a plugin since it's not that big a deal. They aren't terribly efficient, but they work and thats what matters. Also, I pre-pended jh to the function names so there wouldn't be any chance of collisions.

Returns true if there are more posts, newer or older.

function jh_more_posts() {
  global $paged, $result, $request, $posts_per_page, $wpdb, $max_num_pages;
	if ( isset($max_num_pages) ) {
		$max_page = $max_num_pages;
	} else {
		preg_match('#FROM\s(.*)\sGROUP BY#siU', $request, $matches);
		$fromwhere = $matches[1];
		$numposts = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT ID) FROM $fromwhere");
		$max_page = $max_num_pages = ceil($numposts / $posts_per_page);
	}
	if( !$paged )
	  $paged = 1;
	if($paged == 1 && $paged == $max_page)
	  return false;
	else
	  return true;	
}

Returns true if there are more 'older' posts.

function jh_more_old() {
  global $paged;
	if( !$paged  || $paged == 1)
	  return true;	
	 else
	  return false;
}

Returns true if there are more 'newer' posts.

function jh_more_new() {
  global $paged, $result, $request, $posts_per_page, $wpdb, $max_num_pages;
	if ( isset($max_num_pages) ) {
		$max_page = $max_num_pages;
	} else {
		preg_match('#FROM\s(.*)\sGROUP BY#siU', $request, $matches);
		$fromwhere = $matches[1];
		$numposts = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT ID) FROM $fromwhere");
		$max_page = $max_num_pages = ceil($numposts / $posts_per_page);
	}
	if( !$paged )
	  $paged = 1;
	if($paged == $max_page)
	  return true;
	else
	  return false;	
}