Month: May 2021

This post is part of the ClassicPress Plugin Development series in which I am going to look at both best practice for developing plugins and how I approach some requirements as well as some of the functions I commonly use.

When developing a plugin, it is usual to create an options page to allow users to configure the plugin. The most common way of making the plugin options page available to users is to add it to the Settings menu in the admin dashboard; however, ClassicPress has a Security menu available which allows security plugins to be separated from the other settings on a site. This Security menu does not exist in WordPress so if you’re writing a plugin to be compatible with both ClassicPress and WordPress you will need to manage this when adding the options page.

This is done using the add_security_page function available with ClassicPress.

add_security_page(string $page_title, string $menu_title, string $menu_slug, callable $function = '')
Parameters
$page_title (string) (Required) The text to be displayed in the title tags of the page when the menu is selected.

$menu_title (string) (Required) The text to be used for the menu.

$menu_slug (string) (Required) The slug name to refer to this menu by (should be unique for this menu); must match an active plugin or mu-plugin slug..

$function (callable) (Optional) The function to be called to output the content for this page.
Default value: ''
Return
(string|false) The resulting page's hook_suffix, or false if the user does not have the capability required.

The function above is made accessible using the add_action function along with a admin_menu tag.

The below is an example, including check for the security menu being available, of an options page using my vendor prefix of azrcrv and a plugin identifer of XXXX:

add_action('admin_menu', 'azrcrv_XXXX_add_options_page');

function azrcrv_XXXX_add_options_page() {
	if (function_exists('add_security_page')){
		add_security_page( 
			esc_html__('XXXX Options', 'text-domain'),
			esc_html__('XXXX', 'text-domain'),
			dirname(plugin_basename(__FILE__ )),
			'azrcrv_XXXX_display_options_page'
		);
	}else{
		// add options in WordPress compatible way; possibly using the add_options_page function.
	}
}

If the menu being added is for a network, rather than individual site, the $tag would be network_admin_menu instead of admin_menu.

When an options page is added to the Security menu, a plugin action link is automatically added:

This post is part of the ClassicPress Plugin Development series in which I am going to look at both best practice for developing plugins and how I approach some requirements as well as some of the functions I commonly use.

When developing a plugin, it is usual to create an options page to allow users to configure the plugin. The most common way of making the plugin options page available to users is to add it to the Settings menu in the admin dashboard.

This is done using the add_options_page function available with ClassicPress.

add_options_page(string $page_title, string $menu_title, string $capability, string $menu_slug, callable $function = '', int $position = null)
Parameters
$page_title (string) (Required) The text to be displayed in the title tags of the page when the menu is selected.

$menu_title (string) (Required) The text to be used for the menu.

$capability (string) (Required) The capability required for this menu to be displayed to the user.

$menu_slug (string) (Required) The slug name to refer to this menu by (should be unique for this menu).

$function (callable) (Optional) The function to be called to output the content for this page.
Default value: ''

$position (int) (Optional) The position in the menu order this item should appear.
Default value: null
Return
(string|false) The resulting page's hook_suffix, or false if the user does not have the capability required.

The function above is made accessible using the add_action function along with a admin_menu tag.

The below is an example of an options page using my vendor prefix of azrcrv and a plugin identifer of XXXX:

add_action('admin_menu', 'azrcrv_XXXX_add_options_page');

function azrcrv_XXXX_add_options_page() {
    add_options_page( 
        esc_html__('XXXX Options', 'text-domain'),
        esc_html__('XXXX', 'text-domain'),
        'manage_options',
        dirname(plugin_basename(__FILE__ )),
        'azrcrv_XXXX_display_options_page'
    );
}

If the menu being added is for a network, rather than individual site, the $tag would be network_admin_menu instead of admin_menu.

This post is part of the ClassicPress Plugin Development series in which I am going to look at both best practice for developing plugins and how I approach some requirements as well as some of the functions I commonly use.

When developing a plugin with an settings page, it is quite common to add a link to the settings page on the Plugins page; these links are known as plugin action links. This is an example from my URL Shortener plugin:

The plugin action link can be added by using the add_filter function:

add_filter(string $tag, callable $function_to_add, int $priority = 10, int $accepted_args = 1)

The $tag to use is plugin_action_links, the $function_to_add is the function you need to write to add the link and the accepted_args is 2

Below is an example of the filter using the plugin_action_links tag to add the link to the URL Shortener plugin’s settings page:

add_filter('plugin_action_links', 'azrcrv_urls_add_plugin_action_link', 10, 2);

The azrcrv_urls_add_plugin_action_link function called by the filter is:

/**
 * Add URL Shortener action link on plugins page.
 *
 * @since 1.0.0
 *
 */
function azrcrv_urls_add_plugin_action_link($links, $file){
	static $this_plugin;

	if (!$this_plugin){
		$this_plugin = plugin_basename(__FILE__);
	}

	if ($file == $this_plugin){
		$settings_link = '<a href="'.admin_url('admin.php?page=azrcrv-urls').'">'.esc_html__('Settings' ,'url-shortener').'</a>';
		array_unshift($links, $settings_link);
	}

	return $links;
}

The highlighted section is the menu_slug for the settings page.

This post is part of the ClassicPress Plugin Development series in which I am going to look at both best practice for developing plugins and how I approach some requirements as well as some of the functions I commonly use.

jQuery itself is automatically loaded by ClassicPress so we don’t need to do anything to load this ourselves in a plugin; it is just our own jQuery script which we need to register and enqueue. There is two ways in which scripts can be loaded in a plugin; I will cover them both, but will note first of all that I typically use the second approach; there is an argument that the first approach is the “correct” one.

The first thing to do when you are loading a script is to register it. This is done using the wp_register_script function which ClassicPress provides.

Continue reading “ClassicPress Plugin Development: Loading Back-End Scripts”

This post is part of the ClassicPress Plugin Development series in which I am going to look at both best practice for developing plugins and how I approach some requirements as well as some of the functions I commonly use.

jQuery itself is automatically loaded by ClassicPress so we don’t need to do anything to load this ourselves in a plugin; it is just our own jQuery script which we need to register and enqueue. There is two ways in which scripts can be loaded in a plugin; I will cover them both, but will note first of all that I typically use the second approach; there is an argument that the first approach is the “correct” one.

The first thing to do when you are loading a script is to register it. This is done using the wp_register_script function which ClassicPress provides.

Continue reading “ClassicPress Plugin Development: Loading Front-End Scripts”