Wordpress: shortcode doesn't work when getting post content using function get_post_field()

Question

I want to get the post content by id outside the loop, so i am using following code:

    echo get_post_field('post_content', $postid);

It works fine, however, if the post contains any shortcodes, the shortcodes don't work properly. It only echoes the shortcode as plain text.

Example: I'm using following code in editor to display image and caption text inder the image:

    [caption id="attachment_23" align="alignnone" width="300"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-23 " alt="" src="http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Desert-300x225.jpg" width="300" height="225" /> this is caption[/caption]

But when i get this post content using function get_post_field(), Instead of displaying caption text, it displays:

    [caption id="attachment_23" align="alignnone" width="300"]this is caption[/caption] 

Any solution?

N.B: I am using ajax to get the contents

Answer 1

This will work:

echo do_shortcode(get_post_field('post_content', $postid));

Edit

If you want to forcefully output shortcode within Ajax, please see running shortcode inside AJAX request

Answer 2

You need to filter your content before displaying it, so try the following code:

echo apply_filters( 'the_content', get_post_field('post_content', $postid) );

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Update: You can't output shortcodes using ajax calls hooked into wp_ajax. WP Ajax runs both public as well as closed calls via admin.php. This means that you don't have access to the whole wp environment, such as do_shortcode(), which is inside /wp-includes/shortcodes.php.