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Using Ray in WordPress Development: Introduction

January 11, 2022 / Tom

TL;DR: This is the first article in a series in which I’m going to walkthrough how to use Ray in WordPress development. From installation, plugin creation, and both beginner and advanced use of the application.

Starting last summer, I started to use Spatie Ray in my day-to-day work. I’ve written a few posts about it:

The more I’ve used the software and the more I’ve talked with other developers in the WordPress space, the more I see there’s potential for how to really leverage all the features the software offers beyond a glorified var_dump or print_r.

If you’re someone who’s comfortable writing code for WordPress but hasn’t gotten started with a debugger or is someone who is used to writing statements out to the browser, it’s my hope this series will provide you with everything you need to get started.

📝 Notes, Prerequisites, and More

I don’t necessarily have any pre-requisites as I’m going to be writing about Ray using an example plugin and project and doing so from the ground-up.

I do assume you have a local environment running and you’re comfortable working with Visual Studio Code or another IDE. When applicable, I’ll link to documentation that may be useful for setting up a development environment or diving deeper into a topic.

Though I plan to provide some explanation as to what we’ll be doing in a given step, such as installing Ray via Composer, I won’t necessarily be taking the time to show how to install Composer. Instead, I’ll link to other blog posts or available documentation to do that.

With that said, let’s get started with using Ray in WordPress Development.

Writing Helper Functions in Procedural Programming in WordPress

January 10, 2022 / Tom

TL;DR: Here’s how you can write domain-specific, testable helper functions in procedural programming in WordPress.

If you decide to use procedural code when writing plugins or extensions for WordPress, this doesn’t mean that everything has to be in a monolithic function. That is, it’s still possible – and a good idea – keep domain-specific work contained within its own function.

So even if you’re using a weird mix of namespaces and autoloading along with procedural programming, you can still take advantage of functions that do one thing and one thing well to help keep the code a bit cleaner. I will say, though, this is where docblocks come in handy.

In this article, I’ll share an example of how to simultaneously using procedural programming, anonymous functions, and utility functions (or helper functions) to make sure that you’re writing code that’s well-documented and easy to follow.

Install Ray Per Project at an Application Level

January 7, 2022 / Tom

TL;DR: Here’s an easy way to incorporate Ray into all of your WordPress projects without needing to add use at the top of your project files. Thanks to my friend Aubrey for sharing this.

You know about Ray, right? I’ve talked about it twice already:

If you’ve been using Ray in your WordPress projects and have been including it in your composer.json file, then you’ve likely set up the top of your files like this:

use WP_Post;
use WP_Term;
use Spatie\Ray;

defined('WPINC') || die;
require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

Notice that the namespace for Ray is included in this. But if this is a utility meant for printing out error messages for debugging purposes, much like we’re used to seeing with Xdebug, then why would we include it in every file? That is, why would we include a use statement for a dependency that’s not sent to production?

We don’t have to do so.

Don’t Forget Procedural Programming in WordPress

January 6, 2022 / Tom

TL;DR: As much as I like using object-oriented programming for writing code, it’s not the only way to write code. The same goes for WordPress-centric code, too. When writing solutions for WordPress, don’t set out to write everything in an object-oriented way. Don’t forget procedural programming in WordPress.

For the last few months, I’ve been writing a handful of small utility plugins (for lack of a better word) for WordPress. These are things that are designed to do at least one of the following:

add a feature that I wish exists but doesn’t,
improve functionality of the administration area to make achieving a given task easier,
introduce functionality that’s easier for a sites that have a large database of users,
and more.

As someone who’s historically been one to go on and on about why we should be using object-oriented programming, I’ve not been doing much of that in these plugins.

Instead, I’ve been using some features of PHP, like namespaces and autoloading, to keep the code running in its own area to prevent potential conflicts with other plugins. I’ve also been using PSR12 with procedural programming.

For as much as I’ve written about object-oriented programming, I don’t think I’ve written enough (and I certainly won’t do so in a single post 🙂) about procedural programming.

But that doesn’t mean now isn’t as good as time as any.

Installing, Configuring, and Setting Up Xdebug in Visual Studio Code

January 5, 2022 / Tom

TL;DR: This is everything that needs to be done to install Xdebug with a Homebrew-based environment and to work with the software within Visual Studio Code.

Though I’ve recently become a fan of using Ray (1, 2) for much of my lightweight debugging, this doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s important to have Xdebug installed and configured in Visual Studio Code.

If you follow the steps I’ve outlined starting in the previous post, it’s relatively easy though it still requires a little bit of manual work to get started.

This is how you can set up Xdebug with a Homebrew-based configuration and Visual Studio Code.

Tom McFarlin

Using Ray in WordPress Development: Introduction

Writing Helper Functions in Procedural Programming in WordPress

Install Ray Per Project at an Application Level

Don’t Forget Procedural Programming in WordPress

Installing, Configuring, and Setting Up Xdebug in Visual Studio Code