Shortcode

[shaped_gallery id="42"] — the one tag, what it accepts, and how to use it from PHP.

The tag

[shaped_gallery id="42"]

One attribute, id: the post id of a reusable gallery. That's the whole surface.

You never need to write it by hand — copy it from the gallery's Gallery Info panel, its Post tab, or the Shortcode column of Shaped Gallery → Saved Galleries.

From PHP

echo do_shortcode( '[shaped_gallery id="42"]' );

In a template, that's all there is to it. The output is already escaped.

What it renders

The shortcode reads the gallery's stored block content and runs it through the block's own renderer. It is not a second implementation.

That's the pillar the whole placement story rests on: a gallery placed as a block, as a shortcode, or through a page-builder element produces byte-identical markup, CSS and JavaScript. There's no "shortcode version" of a feature to fall behind.

Guards

The shortcode applies every rule the block does, plus a few of its own:

Situation	Result
The id doesn't exist, or isn't a gallery	Empty output.
The gallery is in the trash	Empty output.
The gallery is a draft	Rendered only for users who can edit it.
A gallery embeds itself	The recursion is caught; empty output.
The gallery is Private	Empty output for anyone without permission.
The gallery is Password-protected	The password form, then the gallery.
The license isn't active	Administrators get a notice; visitors get empty output.

Every one of those returns an empty string, never an error message on your page.

Filtering the output

add_filter(
    'shaped_gallery_shortcode_output',
    function ( $html, $gallery_id ) {
        return '<div class="my-wrapper">' . $html . '</div>';
    },
    10,
    2
);

Building the tag in code

Don't spell the tag out in your own code. The plugin has one builder for it, so the format can't drift:

use ShapedPlugin\ShapedGallery\Frontend\Frontend;

$shortcode = Frontend::shortcode_for( 42 );
// [shaped_gallery id="42"]

The string depends on nothing but the post id, which is what makes it permanent across edits.

Finding gallery ids

Reusable galleries are posts of the shaped_gallery type:

$galleries = get_posts(
    array(
        'post_type'      => 'shaped_gallery',
        'post_status'    => 'publish',
        'posts_per_page' => -1,
    )
);

foreach ( $galleries as $gallery ) {
    echo esc_html( $gallery->post_title ) . ': ' . $gallery->ID . "\n";
}

Two derived meta keys are maintained for you on every save — for the native editor, the REST route, an import and a duplicate alike:

Meta key	Holds
_shaped_gallery_layout	The gallery's current layout id.
_shaped_gallery_item_count	How many items it holds.

Both are recomputed from the saved content, never written by a caller. Don't write to them — you'd be overwritten on the next save, and two derivations is how a stale layout column happens.

Things worth knowing

The tag never changes. [shaped_gallery] is fixed — stored pages depend on it, and both the free and Pro builds use the same one.

Galleries embedded in a page have no shortcode. Only saved galleries do. That's the difference between the two placement models. More →

Editing a gallery updates every placement. Pages hold a reference, so there's no sync step — and deleting a gallery blanks it everywhere.

Where to go next

• Reusable Galleries · Integrations
• Hooks · REST API