Get The Src Attribute From WordPress Post Thumbnail

Getting the src attribute from post thumbnail using a bit of regex.

Feb 4th, 2010 / Tips&Tricks

Solution

My previous post was How To Use The Post Thumbnail In WordPress 2.9 so if you aren’t familiar with post thumbnail feature WordPress has read that post first.

Here is a little snippet to get the SRC attribute of the post thumbnail.

$thumbnail = wp_get_attachment_image_src ( get_post_thumbnail_id ( $post->ID ));

$thumbnail will be an array holding the link, the width and the height, so to get the link use $thumbnail[0].

If you have multiple thumbnail sizes (specified using add_image_size()) you can use the code bellow to get the proper image, just change size with the proper image size name.

$thumbnail = wp_get_attachment_image_src ( get_post_thumbnail_id ( $post->ID ), "size");

Updated

Thanks to ralle (from the comments bellow) for this solution

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13 comments

by Romek on February 21, 2010

Thanks!!!!! Saved my time
by Boba on February 22, 2010

You’re welcome
by AtraBile on March 21, 2010

Thx !! pretty useful !!!!
by Andres on June 13, 2010

Thanks!
I need to get the title of the thumbnail and I didn’t find the way. With this I changed ‘src’ for ‘title’ and works great!
Thanks again for shearing the function!
by Nikita Sumeiko on July 4, 2010

Helped very much!
Great job, thx.
by Tighe on July 10, 2010

Thanks! I was looking everywhere for this and couldn’t figure it out on my own
by Amin on August 3, 2010

Thanks for code.

However when I try this I am only able to link to the actually src of the thumbnail (feature image) which is 150px y 150px. (src=”http://www.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/1-150×150.jpg”)

How can I make this link to the original image which is 1000px by 750px? (src=”http://www.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/1.jpg”).

Thanks
by Boba on August 3, 2010

@Amin – get_the_post_thumbnail() accepts 2 parameters, one of them is the size you need. Take a look at http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_the_post_thumbnail
by Amin on August 3, 2010

I see. Thanks!

My final code just for reference is::

$thumb = get_the_post_thumbnail($post->ID, $size);
$pattern= “/(?<=src=['|\"])[^'|\"]*?(?=['|\"])/i";
preg_match($pattern, $thumb, $thePath);
$theSrc = $thePath[0];
echo "“.get_the_post_thumbnail($post->ID,array(640,9999)).”“;
by ralcus on October 14, 2010

Thanks just what i needed, i should really brush up on regular expressions i never thought of using one i just spent my time futily looking for a way to get the src from a wp function.
by ralle on October 31, 2010

You do not have to use regex – try out this solution:
$thumbnail = wp_get_attachment_image_src ( get_post_thumbnail_id ( $post->ID ), $size );
by petergibbons on December 13, 2010

ralle’s right you don’t need regex

to print the src echo $thumbnail[0];

genius ralle, thanks!
by Boba on December 13, 2010

@ralle – Thanks, updated the post.

@petergibbons – Yup, updated.