Author: Tom (Page 146 of 430)

Debugging WordPress (The Right Way)

September 28, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Debugging WordPress projects is one of those things that WordPress developers seem to approach differently.

Though there are certainly different ways to do it, I’m of the mind that using a debugger is the most effective way to, ahem, debug a project. I’m not saying that to try to be a purist, but the benefits of using an actual debugger far outweigh the alternatives.

But in WordPress, it seems that using facilities built into PHP are far more prevalent than using software specifically designed for debugging.

Sometimes, I think this comes with the nature of looking at other peoples code, and sometimes I think comes from not knowing where else to start.

But if there’s one thing that can not only help you become better at debugging projects and understanding source code, nothing can top debugging WordPress projects with an actual debugger.

Ajax in WordPress: The Client-Side Ajax Protocol

September 27, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

A client-side Ajax protocol is arguably more about parsing the response from the server than it is implementing actual functionality.

This isn’t to say that as the server-side protocol mature, the client-side won’t as well. But, often, what changes on the server is what will dictate change on the client.

By that, I mean that if we’re to introduce a new message in the protocol, then it will be first added to the server-side protocol and then the client-side protocol will need to support it. Rarely will it happen the other way around (at least in the types of projects that are built on WordPress.

With all of that said, how do we support the protocol in JavaScript (or on the client-side)?

Ajax in WordPress: The Server-Side Ajax Protocol

September 26, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

When you’re implementing a protocol, you have to think about server-side ajax functionality and client-side Ajax functionality.

Though they work together to create a complete feature, they have to implement a protocol. And the way they implement the protocol is a bit different depending on which part of the application you’re focused on creating.

That is, the server-side is going to implement functionality and the protocol in one way, and the client-side is going to have its implementation on how it handles the response from the server.

Ajax in WordPress: Protocol Syntax

September 23, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

The Ajax protocol syntax is something that was briefly mentioned in the first post in this series. One of the things mentioned is that a protocol required:

Syntax which should be consistent.

That is, it’s not something that’s defined for us. On the contrary, we have the ability to define the Ajax protocol we want to use on a project-specific basis. I’m a fan of this because I find that different projects call for different semantics (in a number of ways, protocols not excluded).

An early protocol. Kind of awesome. Product of a bygone era.

But, if you so choose, you can implement the same protocol syntax across your entire set of projects (though I’d find it difficult to think one protocol would match all use cases).

Regardless, this post will cover the first step in establishing an Ajax protocol syntax that you may (or may not) use in a WordPress project.

Ajax in WordPress: A Series on Protocols

September 22, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Ajax in WordPress is one of those APIs that’s easy to work with (assuming you understand the fundamentals).

A highly technical illustration of Ajax.

For the most part, it’s as simple as:

Defining a function on the server-side and hooking it to the proper WordPress hook,
Setting up JavaScript to make a POST or a GET request to the particular function,
Handling the response on the client-side once the function as returned it.

Sure, there are things like localization and security that matter but they aren’t as difficult to implement as you might think. These topics are outside the focus of this post, though.

Instead, one of the things that I usually implement is a simple protocol of sorts to help when handling response information from the server.

In short, I’m talking about the idea of using a protocol, of sorts, when using Ajax in WordPress. And it sounds like a more complicated concept than it is.