[wp-hackers] Best Practice for accessing _WP_Dependency->extra?

[Jason Penney]

Hi,

In the process of updating my "Use Google Libraries" plugin
[http://jasonpenney.net/wordpress-plugins/use-google-libraries/] to take
advantage of the changes in WordPress 2.8 I saw that I needed to persist
any properties added using $scripts->add_data() to the new
registrations.  I didn't see anything that looked like a valid API for
doing this, so I ended up doing something like the following:

	// save off the old script before unregistering it
	$oldscript = $scripts->registered[$script->handle];

...

	// re-add all the extra data from the old script to the new
	foreach ($oldscript->extra as $data_name => $data) {
 		$scripts->add_data($script->handle,$data_name,$data);
	}


This seems to have done what I want, but probably not in the best
possible way (directly accessing 'registered' and 'extra' strike me as
likely to be problematic in future).

I was looking for something like the following:

class WP_Dependencies {
	// ...
	/**
	 * Retrieves extra data
	 *
	 * Returns data only if script has already been added
 	 *
	 * @param string handle Script name
	 * @param string data_name (optional) Name of object in which to

	 *        retrieve data from
	 * @return mixed false if handle not registered, Array value if
         *        $data_name is provided, Array containing all extra
         *        data if $data_name is false
	 */

	function get_data( $handle, $data_name = false) {
		if ( !isset($this->registered[$handle]) )
        		return false;
		if (!$data_name)
			return $this->registered[$handle]->extra;
		return $this->registered[$handle]->extra[$data_name];
	}
	// ...
}

Any pointers or suggestions appreciated,
Jay

-- 
Jason C Penney (jpenney at jczorkmid.net)
http://jasonpenney.net/