WordPress | Get names

get_names.php

<?php
/**
* A function to split the post title into first and last names,
* We assume everything up to the first whitespace is the first name,
* the rest is considered the last name.
*/
function get_names( $full_name ) {
    if( $full_name ) {
        $full_name = sanitize_text_field($full_name); // remove nasties
        /**
        * For the first name we use the third parameter of strstr,
        * setting it to TRUE returns the part of the haystack BEFORE the first
        * occurrence of whitespace (excluding the whitespace).
        */
        $first = strstr($full_name, ' ', true);
        /**
        * For the last name we use strstr in the typical way,
        * it returns everything after the first occurance of whitespace but
        * it includes the whitespace, so we use ltrim to remove it
        */
        $last = ltrim(strstr($full_name, ' '));
        $names = array(
            'first' => $first,
            'last' => $last
        );
    } else {
        $names = null;
    }
    return $names;
}

WordPress function to get first and last names from a full name

I've written this as I have custom posts where the post title is the full name of the person.

At various places in the theme I only need the first or last name of the person, so we use this function to break it up.

It is used like this:

    $post_title = get_the_title();
    $names = get_names($post_title);
    $first_name = $names['first'];
    $last_name = $names['last'];

    <p>First name: <?php echo $first_name; ?></p>
    <p>Last name: <?php echo $last_name; ?></p>

This code would typically go in your single.php template.

Note: This function assumes everything after the first space is a last name, so if the person uses middle names they will be included as part of the last name too. I guess it could be made more sophisticated by counting whitespace occurrences and if two or more exist extract the characters between the first and last occurrences and set it/them as middle name(s). However this suffices for my application.