Building WordPress Themes With Bootstrap with Adi Purdila → TutsPlus

In this case, paginate_links is being called and is expected to return an array of links.

$args = array(
    'prev_next' => false,
    'type' => 'array'
);

paginate_links – Retrieve paginated link for archive post pages. Technically, the function can be used to create paginated link list for any area ( e.g.: « Prev 1 … 3 4 5 6 7 … 9 Next » )

• prev_next (boolean) (optional) Whether to include the previous and next links in the list or not.
• type (string) (optional) Controls format of the returned value. Possible values are:
  • ‘plain’ – A string with the links separated by a newline character.
  • ‘array’ – An array of the paginated link list to offer full control of display.
  • ‘list’ – Unordered HTML list.

The next bits are looping through each page. The as lets you define any variable name you want to represent the value, the tutorial chose $page.

foreach ( $pagination as $page )

If it contains the term current then extra attributes are added to mark it for styling.

strpos( $page, 'current' )

Example output of the function might look like:

Array
(
    [0] => <span class="page-numbers current">1</span>
    [1] => <a class="page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/2/">2</a>
    [2] => <a class="page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/3/">3</a>
    [3] => <span class="page-numbers dots">…</span>
    [4] => <a class="page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/7/">7</a>
)

With prev_next set to true you would see something like:

Array
(
    [0] => <a class="prev page-numbers" href="http://example.com/">« Previous</a>
    [1] => <a class="page-numbers" href="http://example.com/">1</a>
    [2] => <span class="page-numbers current">2</span>
    [3] => <a class="page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/3/">3</a>
    [4] => <a class="page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/4/">4</a>
    [5] => <span class="page-numbers dots">…</span>
    [6] => <a class="page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/7/">7</a>
    [7] => <a class="next page-numbers" href="http://example.com/page/3/">Next »</a>
)

If you want to experiment and check the output try:

$args = array (
        'prev_next' => true,
        'type'      => 'array',
);
echo "<pre>";
ob_start();
print_r( paginate_links( $args ) );
esc_html_e( ob_get_clean() );