Tag: WordPress Widgets (Page 3 of 4)

In terms of updating the WordPress Widget Boilerplate (all of which is tracked in the develop branch), we’ve come a long way in terms of refactoring how it’s organized.

Thus far, we’ve:

• looked at how the WordPress Widget API provides an example of object-oriented programming,
• how we can use this API to determine object-oriented programming in other areas of WordPress,
• installed tools to help us evaluate the quality of the code,
• found errors that currently exist in the code in terms of modern programming standards,
• and began re-organizing the code base so that it fits with more modern practices.

Now we’re ready to start refactoring this code in a much more object-oriented manner.

So if you’ve yet to catch up with the previous posts (any of them, really), I recommend doing so because it’s going to take a little while to bring this up to date. There’s a lot of code to write an explain.

Let’s get started.

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After all of the preliminary content, we are finally at a place where we are ready to begin resolving the coding standard problems thrown by our IDE and by our code quality tools.

In doing this, I’m going to be breaking down the content into two posts:

• the first post is going to focus solely on refactoring the existing code,
• in the next post, we’re going to look at refactoring the structure of the plugin to enhance the organization and architecture.

For now, though, let’s take a look at the errors the code sniffer is throwing and see if we can’t bring it up to more modern standards.

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The last post included a lot of information on setting up code quality tools in your WordPress development environment, but they are necessary if we are going to be doing a lot of refactoring.

But as I mentioned at the start of this post, laying code quality tools first provides us with a foundation we can use as we refactor the boilerplate (which we clearly need to do given the amount of red shown by GrumPHP).

Honestly, I see these as necessary if you’re going to be doing any type of development hence the need to show how to set them up.

Regardless, the previous post shows just how much work we have cut out for us, right?

Now we’re going to start with refactoring the WordPress Widget Boilerplate.

This will not only improve the code quality but also walk us through some object-oriented principles that we can apply when building our widgets and we can apply in future WordPress development efforts.

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The purpose of this series is to start doing a deeper dive into working with object-oriented programming in the context of WordPress.

And since the WordPress Widgets API is one of the APIs that does use object-oriented practices, it’s a logical place to start. Further, it will give us some foundational techniques that we can use to apply to future work as we see how to build more object-oriented projects on WordPress in future series.

So far, we’ve covered the following:

1. WordPress Widgets: An Object-Oriented Approach. The Widgets API provides a solid litmus test and example of how to get started with object-oriented programming in WordPress.
2. WordPress Widgets: How to Detect Object-Oriented Programming. The goal is to arm you with everything you need to detect object-oriented practices.

If you’re not caught up, now’s a great time to do so. And if you have, then you’ll recall from the last post, we ended with the following note:

That is, we’ll revisit the WordPress Widget Boilerplate and I’m going to be refactoring it in its current state to adopt more modern PHP standards.

To begin updating the WordPress Widget Boilerplate to follow said standards, we need to do a few things:

1. create a branch from the existing boilerplate,
2. install code quality tools,
3. ensure our IDE is properly set up,
4. and begin refactoring the code to said standards.

And that’s what we’re going to start doing with this post.

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If you’ve not read the first post in this series, I recommend it, as we’re starting to get into writing object-oriented code for WordPress through the use of the Widgets API.

The series is going to capture a few things:

1. show you the basic skeleton of a widget and why it’s object-oriented,
2. discuss what things you should be able to notice and why
3. update the Widget Boilerplate directly on this site first and then push it out to GitHub,
4. build a widget using the API with the boilerplate as the foundation for our work.

But before doing that, I want to make sure that everyone reading this is caught up on the core principles of object-oriented programming and has everything needed to build out an object-oriented solution for WordPress.

To that end, I recommend the following:

1. Two Pillars of Object-Oriented Programming: Part 1 of 2
2. Two Pillars of Object-Oriented Programming: Part 2 of 2
3. Abstract Classes, Part 1 – Abstracting Behavior
4. Abstract Classes, Part 2 – Abstract Classes and Interfaces
5. The Independent WordPress Developer

If you’ve read all of that content, great. You’re going to be well-prepared for this post and the upcoming posts. If not, there may be some holes in the rest of what you’re about to read, but the gist of the post should be clear enough.

What’s The Deal, Exactly?

Here’s the thing: Last week, I shared a bit of code along with some information about the Widgets API. I’m going to be revisiting that a little bit more in this post before we get into the more coding intensive part for two reasons:

1. I want everyone reading this to be on the same page as it relates to writing object-oriented code (at the very least, in this context),
2. I recognize that people are coming from different backgrounds and I want to make sure we’re all on the same page as much as possible before proceeding.

If you have experience with writing object-oriented code, especially in an advanced capacity, this may seem simpler to you; otherwise, I hope this is going to arm you with everything you need to detect object-oriented practices not only concerning this API but when reading others’ code, too.

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