[wp-hackers] Improving Plugin (and Theme) metadata

[Knut-Olav Hoven]

On Thursday 24 January 2008 23:17:04 Peter Westwood wrote:
> Hi All.
>
> Firstly apologies for starting a new thread but the old one has grown a
> bit and I want to try and refocus the discussion a bit.

Looks like this thread has also grown "a bit" too ;)

>
>[...]
>
> Example metadata.php file:
>
> <?php
>
> load_plugin_textdomain();
>
> register_plugin( plugin_filename.php,
> ~                 __('Description'),
> ~                 __('Plugin Name'),
> ~                'http://example.com',
> ~                'Joe Bloggs',
> ~                 'http://joe.bloggs.name'),);
>
> //The End
> ?>

Something that is not PHP code should not be in PHP code. It should be in a 
configuration file.

I use YAML for all my configuration, it's easy to read and write and there are 
good parsers for it available.


A proposal:

---
name: My Plugin
description: >
    My Plugin is a very nice
    plugin for Wordpress.
author:
    name: Knut-Olav Hoven
    url:  http://www.hoven.ws/
.locales:
    nb:
        name: Mitt Innstikk
        description: >
            Mitt Innstikk er et fint
            tillegg til WordPress.
# END


When parsed using SPYC we get the following data structure:

Array
(
    [0] => --
    [name] => My Plugin
    [description] => Plugin is a very nice plugin for Wordpress.
    [author] => Array
        (
            [name] => Knut-Olav Hoven
            [url] => http://www.hoven.ws/
        )

    [.locales] => Array
        (
            [nb] => Array
                (
                    [name] => Mitt Innstikk
                    [description] => Mitt Innstikk er et fint tillegg til 
WordPress.
                )

        )

)



This provides default data, with posibility to override it with data from the 
locale of choice.


Other data that can go into this file is:
- version numbers
- release date
- changelog
- plugin url
- compatible with (wordpress versions)


-- 
Knut-Olav Hoven
Systemutvikler               mob: +47 986 71 700
Linpro AS                    http://www.linpro.no/