Rimco\Plugin

Rimco\Plugin is a small PHP library for implementing plugin extensions in your project.

It is meant to be very easy to use. If you have any experience with trying to allow external modules to extend your project, change certain behaviour and filter different values, you know how helpful it is to have a system to manage all that. Rimco\Plugin is meant to help with that.

How it works ?

Similar to WordPress hooks, the plugin extensions from Rimco\Plugin supports both action and filter methods.

Action Methods

Action methods are meant to help you introduce new behaviour or change existing one at the places in your code where the action is executed. To execute the plugin action, you call \Rimco\Plugin\Call::action() and you pass the name of the action and all arguments needed:

\Rimco\Plugin\Call::action('after_login', $username);

Action methods do not return values.

Filter Methods

Filter methods are used to help you to apply different filters on the passed argument value. To execute the plugin filter, you call \Rimco\Plugin\Call::filter(), you pass the name of the filter, the value you want filtered, and then all other arguments if needed:

// use the "login_request" filter on $request
$request = \Rimco\Plugin\Call::filter('login_request', $request, $username, $password);

Filter methods return the filtered value argument.

Extensions

The plugin extensions is where you put your action methods and methods. Each extension is a class that extends \Rimco\Plugin\Extension, and there is one abstract method that needs to be implemented called \Rimco\Plugin\Extension::info(). It returns some details about the extension as name, author, purpose, etc.

class ProbaExtension extends \Rimco\Plugin\Extension
{
	function info()
	{
		return array(
			'title' => 'Demo Rimco\Plugin Extension',
			'version' => '0.1',
			'description' => 'Demonstrate what a plugin extension looks like',
			'author' => 'Rimco',
		);
	}

	...
}

The extension class must also implement all the action and filter methods you need. All the action methods have action_ prefix and all the filters have filter_ prefix. Methods must be public and non-static since they are called from the \Rimco\Plugin\Call class.

class ProbaExtension extends \Rimco\Plugin\Extension
{
	...

	// ... will be called by \Rimco\Plugin\Call::action('after_login', $username);
	function action_after_login($username)
	{
		error_log("Login OK: {$username}", 3, '/my/app/logs/auth.log');
	}

	// ... will be called by \Rimco\Plugin\Call::filter('login_request', $request, $username, $password);
	function filter_login_request(array $request, $username, $password)
	{
		$request['login'] = strtoupper($username);
		return $request;
	}
}

Method Priorities

Not all methods are equal and some needs to be called earlier than others, or - in some cases - later than others. The way to control who is executed earlier and who later is using the method priorities. This is an integer number associated with each method. Bigger numbers are executed first, or in other words the priority sorting is descending. Default priority is 100.

You can control these method priorities in two ways.

First, inside your extension there is the \Rimco\Plugin\Extension::$priority property. It is an array in which you can explicitly declare the priority for a method, like this:

	/**
	* @internal Declare priority "210" for the "action_after_login" method
	*/
	public $priority = array(
		'action_after_login' => 210
		);

The other method is using docBlock declarations of the method, where you write the priority like this

	/** %priority 123 */
	function filter_login_request(array $request, $username, $password)
	{
		$request['login'] = strtoupper($username);
		return $request;
	}

If by any chance you are using both ways, the \Rimco\Plugin\Extension::$priority declaration is used first, and then the docBlocks are used as fallback.

Disabling Methods

In some rare occasions you might need to disable a certain method: like when some plugin extensions are colliding with each other, or like when certain action should not be performed. In these odd cases, use \Rimco\Plugin\Call::disable() and \Rimco\Plugin\Call::enable() methods.

// disables ProbaExtension::action_after_login()
\Rimco\Plugin\Call::disable('action_after_login', ProbaExtension::class);

Extension Loading

Before being able to use a plugin extension, you must load it up. You do that by passing the extension object to \Rimco\Plugin\Register::load():

\Rimco\Plugin\Register::load(new ProbaExtension);

To get a list of all loaded plugin extensions, you call \Rimco\Plugin\Register::loaded()

print_r( \Rimco\Plugin\Register::loaded() );

It will return a key/value list, there the class of the extension is the key, and the actual extension object is the value:

Array
(
    [ProbaExtension] => ProbaExtension Object
        (
            [priority] => Array
                (
                )

        )

)

Sample Extension

Here's what a plugin extension looks like. Intentionally both the filter and the action methods are called "test" to demonstrate that this is possible. Also you will find both types of method priorities used - the action using the \Rimco\Plugin\Extension::$priority property, and filter using the docBlock declaration.

class ProbaExtension extends \Rimco\Plugin\Extension
{
	function info()
	{
		return array(
			'title' => 'Demo Rimco\Plugin Extension',
			'version' => '0.1',
			'description' => 'Demonstrate what a plugin extension looks like',
			'author' => 'Rimco',
		);
	}

	/**
	* @internal Declare priority "210" for the "action_test" method
	*/
	public $priority = array('action_test' => 210);

	/**
	* Sample action method, will be triggered by "\Rimco\Plugin\Call::action('test')"
	*/
	function action_test()
	{
		echo __METHOD__;
	}

	/**
	* Sample filter method, will be triggered by "\Rimco\Plugin\Call::filter('test')"
	*
	* @internal this is an example of using the docBlock to declare the priority of "123"
	* %priority 123
	*/
	function filter_test($value)
	{
		return __METHOD__ . '.' . $value;
	}
}