ClassicPress Plugin Development: Create a Plugin Action Link

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.