Advanced Archives - Pippins Plugins

Jun 08, 2016

Extending the WordPress metadata API

The WordPress metadata API is a simple way to store and retrieve information related to various objects in WordPress, such as posts, users, and taxonomy terms. Out of the box, WordPress includes post meta, user meta, and term meta, but what if you want metadata on other objects, such as custom objects provided by a plugin? Thankfully, the metadata API is actually quite simple to extend, allowing developers to easily register their own kind of metadata that is attached to their own, custom objects.

Mar 22, 2016

Custom Database API – A Sample Orders Class

In the previous part of this series we wrote the base class that we can then extend for each table in our database. For this part, we’re going to look at what an orders table might look at and build the database class for interacting with the orders table.

Nov 20, 2015

Custom Database API – The Basic API Class

In the previous sections of this series, we have looked at reasons you should build a custom database API, we have discussed how to structure your data, and we have looked at how to create the database tables. Now it is time to build the basic API that we will use to actually interact with our database. This will involve writing an API class with all of the necessary methods for retrieving, inserting, updating, and deleting data.

Oct 13, 2015

Custom Database API – Creating the Tables

Once you have laid out the structure for your database table, it is time to create the actual tables. This is where it gets fun. When the tables are created, you can really begin building your API for interacting with the database and that’s when this whole project begins to truly take shape.

Aug 13, 2015

Custom Database API – Reasons for Custom Tables and an API

The WordPress database class and the other various APIs available make it pretty easy to interact with the WordPress database but often times you need to go a step further and create a custom API specific to your plugin’s database tables. Large plugins especially can benefit from having a custom database API as it standardizes common tasks, making them more reliable, more repeatable, and simpler to debug.

Jun 19, 2015

Batch processing for big data

When it comes to handling large amounts of data, there is really only one way to reliably do it: batch processing. The concept of batch processing is simple. Instead of performing one large query and then parsing / formatting the data as a single process, you do it in batches, one small piece at a time. If you have ever attempted to query or export a large amount of data and had your server timeout, you’ll easily understand just how beneficial batch processing is.

Sep 30, 2014

Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins – Writing Tests

Now that we have gotten through setting up our unit tests and we know the difference between tests and assertions, it is time to begin writing our actual unit tests for our plugin.

Sep 09, 2014

Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins – Tests vs. Assertions

There are two terms we use often when talking about unit tests: tests and assertions. It’s important to know the distinction between the two and to fully understand what each refers to.

Sep 01, 2014

Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins – Setting Up Our Testing Suite

In part one of this tutorial series we briefly looked at what unit tests are and we walked through a couple of simple examples to illustrate how we can use them to help ensure our code is working properly. Now it is time to actually setup our testing suite and run our first unit test.

Aug 28, 2014

Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins – An Introduction

Unit tests are a tool that developers use to test that code is performing properly. The idea behind them is to create a set of tests to determine if your code, given a known data set, gives the expected response.

May 16, 2014

A look at the posts_where filter in WordPress

The WP_Query class in WordPress is extremely robust and allows you to construct just about any kind of query you need for retrieving data from the wp_posts table, but there are still scenarios you will encounter when building your plugins that WP_Query doesn’t support. Before WordPress 3.7, the posts_where filter was used primarily for setting up date-range queries and…

Dec 10, 2013

Template File Loaders in Plugins

Template files are very standard for themes and heavily used in child themes. For example, if a user wants to modify the layout of their site pages, they can simply copy page.php from their parent theme to a child theme, modify the HTML structure, and the changes will be reflected on the site. While it’s…

Dec 04, 2013

Sometimes direct $wpdb queries are better

WordPress has some really awesome functions and classes for retrieving data from the database: WP_Query, WP_User_Query, get_comments(), get_the_terms(), and many, many more. Most of the time these are the functions and classes you should use when querying data from the database–they have some great benefits, such as caching–but there are times when it is actually…

Nov 04, 2013

User Follow System – Part 7

In this final part of the User Follow System tutorial series, we will create two short codes, one for displaying a follow/unfollow link for a user and one for displaying a list of recent posts from users you (the currently logged-in user) follow. We will wrap up the series by also showing a few areas…

Oct 24, 2013

User Follow System – Part 6

In part 5 of this tutorial series we wrote the Javascript that is responsible for firing off the ajax events when a user is followed or unfollowed. Now, in this part, we are going to write the PHP side of the ajax events that takes care of processing the requests and sending a response back…