In the spirit of Ideas for March i should really be blogging more. Somehow i just can’t think of anything interesting at the moment. Will give it a shot anyway.
Last week i created my first ever WordPress plugin. It’s an extremely simple one. And for sure nothing new or special. But it was a fun experience. I have always dreaded the WP code base. The mixture of OO and procedural programming just looks plain ugly to me. But i don’t want to be bash WP. I use it myself. So i took the dive and spend a few hours hacking and reading. And the result is my DWOTD (Dutch Word Of The Day) plugin.
To get some inspiration for this i took a look at some plugin code available on the internet. This gave me a basic understanding of how the plugin system works. Together with the docs writing a plugin wasn’t that hard. The code that i saw however was pretty bad. And i wanted something that at least looked better then all the global statements swarming around. So i created a small OO wrapper for the plugin. The basic plugin structure looks something like this
– plugin
—– css
———- dwotd.css
—– lib
———- Dwotd.php
———- Widget.php
—– template
———- Widget.php
– dwotd.php
The file in the root is the bootstrap file. It includes the main plugin class and registers the widget class. The two files in lib contain the plugin and Widget classes. The rest is self explanatory i think.
The first lines of the bootstrap file contain a comment block that is used by WP to show some more information about the plugin inside the admin.
/*
Plugin Name: DWOTD
Plugin URI: http://lenss.nl/projects/dwotd-plugin/
Description: Dutch Word Of The Day including English translation
Author: Thijs Lensselink
Author URI: http://lenss.nl/
Version: 1.2
*/
Then the plugin class file is loaded and the a plugin object instantiated.
require_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/lib/Dwotd.php');
$DWOTD = new DWOTD_Plugin();
wp_register_style('dwotd', "{$DWOTD->getPluginDir()}/css/dwotd.css");
wp_enqueue_style('dwotd', "{$DWOTD->getPluginDir()}/css/dwotd.css");
If the logged in user is a admin hooks for installing and uninstalling the plugin will be activated.
if ( is_admin() ) {
register_activation_hook(__FILE__, array($DWOTD, 'install'));
register_deactivation_hook(__FILE__, array($DWOTD, 'uninstall'));
}
And finally register the Widget class
add_action('widgets_init', create_function('', 'return register_widget("DWOTD_Widget");'));
The Widget class is a simple wrapper around the plugin class. It basically instantiates the Plugin class and after that the widget() method gets called. This method calls the Plugin and finally renders a view for the widget box.
class DWOTD_Widget extends WP_Widget
{
protected $_dwotd;
public function DWOTD_Widget()
{
$this->_dwotd = new DWOTD_Plugin();
parent::WP_Widget(false, $name = 'DWOTD Plugin');
}
public function widget($args, $instance)
{
$result = $this->_dwotd->getFromCache();
if (!$result || $result->used_on != date('Y-m-d')) {
try {
$result = $this->_dwotd->fetchRandomWord();
$this->_dwotd->writeToCache($result);
} catch (Exception $e) {
return new WP_Error('broke', __($e->getMessage()));
}
}
$this->_renderView($result);
}
protected function _renderView($data)
{
ob_start();
include $this->_dwotd->getTemplate();
ob_get_contents();
}
public function update($new_instance, $old_instance)
{
$instance = $old_instance;
return $instance;
}
}
All real work is done inside the the Plugin class. This has all methods for talking to the database instance. But also contains the hooks for the WP install and uninstall actions. Some of the contents of this method are listed below.
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php');
require_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/Widget.php');
Class DWOTD_Plugin
{
public function __construct()
{
global $wpdb, $table_prefix;
// set some class vars and include some files
}
public function install()
{
// create database and insert data
add_option('dwotd_quote','1');
}
public function uninstall()
{
$this->_dbh->query("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `{$this->_dbName}`");
delete_option('dwotd_quote');
}
public function getPluginDir()
{
return $this->_wpContent.'/plugins/dwotd';
}
}
The code is just a small part of the real code. Which you can download here. After that it’s quite easy. Create a folder for the plugin in wp-content/plugins and copy the files there. Enable it from the plugin manager and enable it in the widget menu (which didn’t work for me because my theme has no sidebar.. well not the wp one :)). So i had to use a manual approach.
After copying the files to the plugin folder login to wp-admin and browse to Plugins/Plugins. Search for the plugin and click activate.
Enabling the widget from the admin panel is easy. Browse to Appearance/Widgets. And drag the widget from the left to the sidebar panel on the right.
Enabling it the manual way is also easy. But required a bit more work. For this to work the correct theme file needs to be edited somewhere in wp-content/themes. And the following code needs to be added in the spot the widget should appear.
$args = array ( 'title' => '' );
$instance = array ( 'title' => 'DWOTD', 'number' => 1 );
$widget = new DWOTD_Widget();
$widget->widget($args,$instance);
That’s all. The result can be viewed on the right top side. I build the plugin for fun and use on an Intranet. So don’t go blaming me if it breaks something. Besides that everybody is free to do with the code as they please.
Thijs Lensselink is a PHP developer, consultant and all out open source enthusiast.
He has over 12+ years of experience in building and maintaining web applications mostly
on linux/Unix/BSD platforms. Besides a full time job he does freelance work with his ...
