Headspace2 JavaScript error

Update: An update of Headspace2 has just been released that seems to solve this issue as well as a few others.

After updating to WordPress 3.0 (yay!) I decided to check the plug-ins that I’ve written to see if they still worked in version 3.0; to my dismay Post Thesaurus had stopped working… nooooo! Not good! A quick scan using Firebug revealed the issue: the Headspace2 plug-in.

Headspace2 is a superb plug-in that allows you to tweak the SEO potential of your site. There are tonnes of options available; All In One SEO is easier to use, but I prefer the flexibility of Headspace2. The problem was occurring in the headspace-tags.js file:

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$(get_tag_element()).val() is undefined
/wp-content/plugins/headspace2/js/headspace-tags.js?ver=3.6.32
Line 76

This error was stopping the rest of the JavaScript on a post page from firing (hence breaking Post Thesaurus). Looking at line 76 of headspace-tags.js you will see:

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// Highlights headspace tags using the WordPress tag field as source
function highlight_tags () {
    var words = $(get_tag_element()).val().toLowerCase().split(',');
    //...
}

The code seems to be falling over when there are no tags, so I just added a ternary operator which checks the array length first.

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var words;
var wordArray = $(get_tag_element());
(wordArray.length) ? words = $(get_tag_element()).val().toLowerCase().split(',') : words = [];

If there are no tags create an empty array, else run the usual code. Adding this code fixed the issue and Post Thesaurus works again. Phew! Panic over. I’m sure this error will be picked up by the developer straight away and fixed in the next update.