[wp-hackers] Plugin Management and Autoupdate System

[Arne Brachhold]

Hi,

On 7/29/06, Computer Guru <computerguru at neosmart.net> wrote:
> I'm done with a framework that checks for the updates.
> Basically I'm going with an RDF RSS file that looks something like this:

I've started an Auto-Update-Plugin half a year ago too but decided to
stop it when I saw that there was already another one. My idea was
similar to the concept from Computer Guru, but I extended the RSS feed
with some special tags:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss xmlns:wpu="http://wordpress.org/dev/wpu/1.0/" version="2.0">
   <channel>
      <title>Google Sitemap Generator</title>
      <link>http://bla.com/GoogleSitemapGenerator/</link>
      <description>This generator will create a Google compliant
sitemap of your WordPress blog.</description>
      <language>en-us</language>
      <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2003 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <lastBuildDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:41:01 GMT</lastBuildDate>

      <wpu:pluginLink>http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sm-home/</wpu:pluginLink>
      <wpu:pluginName>GoogleSitemapGenerator</wpu:pluginName>

      <wpu:authorName>Arne Brachhold</wpu:authorName>
      <wpu:authorLink>http://www.arnebrachhold.de/</wpu:authorLink>

      <item>
         <title>Version 1.5</title>
         <link>bla.com/GoogleSitemapGenerator/1.5/</link>
         <description>Works with 2.0, but not 1.5</description>
         <pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2003 09:39:21 GMT</pubDate>
         <guid>http://bla.com/GoogleSitemapGenerator/1.5/</guid>

		 <wpu:minWordPressVersion>2.0.2</wpu:minWordPressVersion>
		 <wpu:maxWordPressVersion>2.5</wpu:maxWordPressVersion>
		
		 <wpu:minPhpVersion>4.3.3</wpu:minPhpVersion>
		 <wpu:maxPhpVersion>4.4.5</wpu:maxPhpVersion>
		 <wpu:downloadLink>http://www.arnebrachhold.de/get/sitemap/sitemap-1.5.zip</wpu:downloadLink>
		
		 <wpu:devStatus>beta</wpu:devStatus>
      </item>
      <item>
         <title>Version 1.0</title>
         <link>http://bla.com/GoogleSitemapGenerator/1.0/</link>
         <description>Initial release.</description>
         <pubDate>Tue, 01 Jun 2003 09:39:21 GMT</pubDate>
         <guid>http://bla.com/GoogleSitemapGenerator/1.0/</guid>

		 <wpu:minWordPressVersion>1.5</wpu:minWordPressVersion>
		 <wpu:maxWordPressVersion>1.5.2.2</wpu:maxWordPressVersion>
		
		 <wpu:minPhpVersion>4.3.3</wpu:minPhpVersion>
		 <wpu:maxPhpVersion>4.4.5RC2</wpu:maxPhpVersion>
		 <wpu:downloadLink>http://www.arnebrachhold.de/get/sitemap/sitemap.1-0.zip</wpu:downloadLink>
		
		 <wpu:devStatus>stable</wpu:devStatus>
      </item>
   </channel>
</rss>

The idea was to code an additional WordPress plugin which allows
plugin developers to announce the new plugin versions directly via
their blog feed. The plugin would add some fields to the post form
(the values above) and the author could use
http://www.theblog.com/category/pluginOne/feed as the update feed.
So you don't need to manage several feeds / files for the same data.
The feed would also support different WordPress and PHP versions so it
could display a message to the user like "The best version of this
plugin for your blog is 1.2, if you upgrade to WordPress 2.0.4 you
could also use the brand-new-super-featured 1.5".

-- 
Arne Brachhold
mail:  himself at arnebrachhold.de
web:   http://www.arnebrachhold.de/