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Rentiva v4.34.1 — Popular Routes Clickable Cards

· 4 min read
MaxHandMade
MaxHandMade
Maintainer

A small but high-leverage patch on top of v4.34.0. Popular Routes cards are now clickable, and clicking one deep-links into the transfer-search form with origin and destination pre-filled. The visitor's path goes from "see a route I want → find the search form → re-pick the same locations from a dropdown of seven → add date/time → submit" down to "click the route → add date/time → submit."

Written before 6.0.0

This post is the record of a release that shipped before 6.0.0, which renamed the plugin's post types, taxonomies, options, meta keys and hooks. The identifiers below are the names those versions actually used, and they are kept that way on purpose. For the current names — and a conversion table — see the 6.0.7 release post.

Why​

A reviewer flagged the obvious gap right after v4.34.0 shipped: the cards looked like CTAs but weren't tappable. A user seeing "İstanbul Havalimanı → Taksim · ₺850" on the homepage instinctively reaches for the card, not the search form three sections down. v4.34.0 left them with a static information panel; v4.34.1 turns it into the conversion surface it should have been.

What changed​

Whole-card click target​

PopularRoutesShortcode::render_card now wraps the <article> in an <a class="mhm-popular-route-card-link">. The href is built with add_query_arg() against a filterable base URL (default: the same target as the section "Search transfers" link, which itself defaults to home_url('/transfer/')).

<a class="mhm-popular-route-card-link"
   href="https://example.com/transfer/?origin_id=73&destination_id=76"
   aria-label="Search transfers from İstanbul Havalimanı (IST) to Taksim Ofis">
  <article class="mhm-popular-route-card mhm-popular-route-card--featured" role="listitem">
    ...
  </article>
</a>

The CSS resets color: inherit; text-decoration: none on the anchor so the card visuals stay identical to v4.34.0, but adds :focus-visible { outline: 2px solid var(--mhm-pr-accent) } so keyboard navigation gets a visible focus ring without disrupting mouse users.

TransferShortcodes::prepare_template_data() now reads origin_id and destination_id from $_GET (absint, sanitized) and exposes them to the template as $preselected_origin and $preselected_destination. The transfer-search.php template gained selected() calls on the <option> elements for both selects.

<option value="<?php echo esc_attr((string) $loc->id); ?>"
        <?php selected(isset($preselected_origin) ? (int) $preselected_origin : 0, (int) $loc->id); ?>>
  <?php echo esc_html($loc->name); ?>
</option>

Backwards compatible: installations that never get ?origin_id=... URLs behave exactly as they did in v4.34.0 (the form opens with empty selects, as before). The change is additive — no breakage, no migration.

New filter — mhm_rentiva_popular_routes_search_url​

The card-link base URL is independently filterable from the section "Search transfers" link. Themes that route the section link to a custom landing page but want the cards to deep-link directly into the search form can do so without one filter clobbering the other.

// Card click target = transfer-search shortcode page
add_filter('mhm_rentiva_popular_routes_search_url', function () {
    return home_url('/transfer-search/');
});

// Section "Search transfers" link target = a curated catalog page
add_filter('mhm_rentiva_popular_routes_view_all_url', function () {
    return home_url('/all-routes/');
});

When the card filter returns empty, the link falls back to the section URL, which falls back to home_url('/transfer/') — sane defaults all the way down.

ARIA labels per card​

aria-label="Search transfers from İstanbul Havalimanı (IST) to Taksim Ofis"

Screen readers announce a meaningful action when the link gets focus. Crawlers also see a real description of where the link goes, which is useful for the homepage SEO surface.

Section label rename​

"View all →" → "Search transfers →" in the section header. The link has always landed on the transfer-search form (not a route catalog page), so the v4.34.0 label was misleading. The new label matches what actually happens.

A future v4.35.x release may add an actual route-catalog page (e.g. /transfer-routes/ rendering all eligible routes in list form), at which point the "View all" label could come back honestly. For now: truth in advertising.

Tests​

  • PHPUnit: 837 → 840 (+3). New tests assert the anchor wrapper exists with the right CSS class, the href carries both origin_id and destination_id query parameters, the mhm_rentiva_popular_routes_search_url filter overrides the base URL, and the section header label has been renamed.
  • PHPCS: 0 errors.
  • Runtime smoke test (Chrome DevTools MCP): rendered 6 cards, each wrapped in an anchor with the correct query-param href and a TR aria-label; navigating to /transfer/?origin_id=73&destination_id=76 pre-selects "İstanbul Havalimanı (IST)" and "Taksim Ofis" in the form selects.

Compatibility​

  • No license-server upgrade.
  • No breaking changes — v4.34.0 sites upgrade in place.
  • Existing transfer-search submissions continue to work without $_GET params.

— GitHub release v4.34.1