benjaminsterling.com

2. Otto

I saw your comment over here:
http://planetozh.com/blog/2008.....-part-one/

The main problem you're talking about here is the necessity to include wp-config and how that keeps changing and breaking plugins.

Here's the problem with that: It's really never necessary to include wp-config.php. Ever. Why? Because it's also never necessary to link to your plugin directly. Just code the plugin to have an alternate output path.

Think of it like this. You're calling your plugin directly for some purpose, possibly to output an image or something. Great. Instead of doing that, have it link to the main blog URL and pass a new parameter on the command line.

Then, the magic: you hook your plugin to template_redirect.

At that point, you can check for that parameter, do whatever it needs to do, and then exit the script, to prevent WordPress from creating any output.

Voila, done. No need to include config or load or anything else. All you need is to create a special GET parameter.

In fact, you can even make your own query_var, if you don't want to look at the GET superglobal.

Example code:

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

1. //create the "test" var
2. function test-var($public_query_vars) {
3. $public_query_vars[] = 'test';
4. return $public_query_vars;
5. }
6. add_filter('query_vars', 'test-vars');
7.  
8. // check for it and do our own output instead of WP's
9. function test-output() {
10. if (get_query_var('mytest')) {
11. echo "hahah!";
12. exit;
13. }
14. }
15. add_action('template_redirect', 'test-output');

See how simple that is? Now a hit to http://example.com/blog/?test=1 will output "hahah!" and then exit.

You never, ever, need to include wp-config.php. It's just not necessary. There's always a forward compatible way to do things.

August 7th, 2008 at 1:18 pm | Link