Author: Tom (Page 72 of 427)

Writing Messages to the WordPress Debug Log

September 4, 2018 / Tom

Whenever I’m working on a project, I often have WordPress set in debug mode, and I like to write messages to the error log that I can easily view, trace, and follow whenever I’m working on a project.

WordPress Debug Log: Monolog

When I do this, there are two ways (and it just depends on the project):

I’ll use a library such as Monolog,
I’ll use my own, simple log function.

In this post, I’m going to cover the latter. That is, I’m going to share how I write messages to the WordPress debug log and then some of the things you may need to pay attention to whenever you’re doing the same.

A Stub for Working with Database Queries in WordPress

August 30, 2018 / Tom

As much as I am a fan of certain WordPress APIs for querying the database such as:

WP_Query,
WP_User_Query,
WP_Meta_Query,
and so on

I’m also a fan of querying directly against the database when needed.

As you’ll notice, there’s a consistent way that I go about doing this and since there are times where I’ve been doing this more frequently, as of late, here is a basic format for working with database queries in WordPress.

If I do this, though, there are generally do things that I keep in mind:

always make sure the query is parameterized (especially in the case of user input),
return in the information in the form of an associative array.

The first case is for security; the second is more or less for convenience to make iterating through the data simpler via PHP array functions.

An Easy Way to Cast a PHP Standard Class to a Specific Type

August 29, 2018 / Tom

If you work with object-oriented PHP in WordPress and you’re building out various models that fit your web applications, the odds are that you’re going to deal with retrieving serialized versions of those models at some point during a program’s execution.

Here’s the thing, though: Sometimes, that unserialized data come back as standard PHP classes. This means that if you inspect the type (through various debugging tools), you’re going to see they are the type of stdClass.

Cast a PHP a Standard Class to a Specific Type: Type Juggling

If you’ve been properly building your models those, your code is going to have functions that the stdClass does not, and you’re going to want to call on them.

Further, you can’t simply cast them from one type to another like you can with native types (such as strings, integers, and so on). In situations like that, you need to be able to cast a PHP standard class to a specific type.

And here’s a function that will help you do just that.

Tools For WordPress Projects: Some of What I Use Daily

August 28, 2018 / Tom

Developers are often interested in the way other developers configure their setups. And I get it.

That is, I assume it’s based on the idea of seeing what tools others are using to determine if you’re missing out on something, if you could improve what you’re currently doing, or if you’re comfortable with what you have.

Whatever the case, I’ll occasionally get emails, tweets, or ICQ messages (wait, what?) that ask what suite of tools for WordPress projects I typically use for each of my projects.

So I thought I’d share a rundown of each application that I typically use and a short description as to how I use each one of them in my day-to-day work.

Triggering Angular Events with jQuery (As Weird As That May Sound)

August 23, 2018 / Tom

One of the things that I enjoy about working with WordPress is the ability to bring in third-party libraries and tools with which to work.

This doesn’t mean they don’t come without their learning curve (they all do, right?), but it’s often fun – albeit frustrating, at times – to incorporate and then manipulate what you’re doing.

As far as third-party technologies go, I’ve seen people bring things in such as the Laravel Illuminate package with WordPress.

Triggering Angular Events with jQuery: Illuminate

And I know, especially in recent years, many have brought in components such as React and Vue.

Triggering Angular Events with jQuery: React

In one such instance, I’ve been doing some work with Angular. And if you’re used to ES6, vanilla JavaScript, or using jQuery, then triggering Angular events with jQuery can seem a bit weird at first.

Triggering Angular Events with jQuery: Angular

But once you understand the markup and how Angular handles its events, it’s not so bad.