I’m learning how to write wordpress plugins, I’ve said that before here in my blog. One of the ways I’m doing it is by downloading/installing existing plugins I see out there which may be interesting to me – they provide actions and capabilities to do things I want my plugin(s) to do … on a more general scale.
One thing I have noticed – almost all of these plugin authors do NOT use classes in their design. Their .php files are full of functions, most of the time written without the
function my_function() {
// and so on
}
}
or
function my_function() {
// and so on
}
}
endif;
How do they expect to avoid naming collisions? If they have to have a function by a certain name which probably exist in some other plugin developer’s file somewhere, then even if they use this !function_exists business they’ll end up getting the other author’s behavior for that function.
Why don’t these people just use classes! I know I’m coming at this from the java world where you have to use classes for everything, and there’s packaging to avoid naming collisions, but still – this seems like an obvious question to me. Do the modern php programmers have no experience with a real class-oriented language?
Here’s a silly example I’m doing. I have a plugin I’m developing to allow Zlatina’s web administrators to deal with their database of students and contacts. It’s called Bcc DBManager.
I created a subdirectory wp-content/plugins/bcc-dbmanager, with a file named bcc-dbmanager.php … duh. I want to hook into the activate_${plugin} (see this link for an explanation of that). Here’s a partial …
/*
Plugin Name: Bcc DBManager
Description: Blah blah
*/
$bccDBManager = new BCC_DBmanager();
add_action('activate_bcc-dbmanager/bcc-dbmanager.php',
array(&$bccDBManager,'_activate'));
class BCC_DBmanager {
function _activate() {
// do stuff
$this->very_common_function_name();
// or this way
BCC_DBmanager::very_common_function_name();
}
## function with a very common name
function very_common_function_name() {
// do stuff
}
}
?>
How hard is that? I certainly don’t know much about plugin development at this point. But I would have to describe the use of functions rather than class instances and methods as Code Smell.
[Edit] Since I wrote this post I found this link on Nerdaphernalia: Use Classes in your WordPress plugins to increase code portability and reduce name conflicts
It seems to be more common in the WordPress plugin world to add some string to the start of the plugin’s name. Thus myplugin_some_function() and myplugin_another_function()
P.S. — “Nerdaphernalia”
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Is there a php-particular advantage to the use of files full of functions rather than classes in this manner?
I’d like to avoid imposing java-think on PHP. PHP is much more useful for us here in Bulgaria at this time … and I’ve discovered wordpress to be a surprisingly flexible CMS, perfect for my needs right now. I know I need to adapt my coding to php-think … so that’s why I asked about any advantage in doing it the way I seem to see plugin authors doing it.
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Bit of a late reply, but…
I certainly don’t know any strong reasons for not using classes in WordPress plugins, (in favor of prepending function names), or I wouldn’t be recommending it on my site. It’s just a different way of doing it. Obviously I prefer using classes myself.
A great many plugins are written by relatively inexperienced programmers. They don’t use classes because they don’t know how. That being said, some very experienced plugin authors choose to prepend function names instead. My tutorial was aimed at those who would if they knew how.
P.S. — Might I suggest the “Subscribe to Comments” plugin for your site?
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I installed the Subscribe To Comments plugin.
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