Good dev citizen

WordCamp Orlando, 2015 - Chad Windnagle
How To Be
A Good Developer
Citizen

Quick Intro
(disclaimer)

Not a Wordpress Guy

Actually a Joomla,
Symfony, Laravel, and
PHP Guy.

8+ Years Working
with Joomla & PHP

Now I work with
Laravel (and
WordPress)

PHP Frameworks

Good* Code

Object Orientation
Programming

Documentation

Testing

These are a few of my
favorite things.

I want to bring Modern
PHP techniques to
WordPress Developers

No! Definitely Not.

Let’s get started

Stop using themes for
functionality.

Themes are for
Presentation.

Only presentation.

Themes should never
• Touch $wp_query
• Change the post content
• Change the post title
• Change the meta data
• Change URL parameter
• Change anything except CSS, javascript, and markup

If your site will not function
the same with a different
theme, you are doing it
wrong.

“But I need
functions.php!”

No you don’t. You
need a plugin.

Plugins are easy to
build.

Plugins can do
everything functions.php
can do.

You can change themes
without affecting plugins,
or needing functions.php

My first plugin
experience:

Documentation and
tutorials are
everywhere.

Google Results for
Building WordPress
Plugins:

Good PHP coding
standards not so
much.

Most information I
found:
• Not object oriented
• Bad function names
• Required Vendor prefixed
• Inconsistent Code Style

How to Plugin The
Right Way

Have some class

This is an application
class.

A few things about this
technique

This is not object
oriented (not really).

We keep the vendor
prefix only on the class
name.

We put most add_action
and add_filter calls into
the constructor.

Now we can do things
like this:

Major PHP Wins:
• Object oriented code
• Reusable Code
• Entering into SOLID programming
• DRY Methods.
• Code that can be extended
• Code that can be inherited
• Flexible Coding FTW

Why have class?
• Clean fast reusable code
• Saves time & money
• Happy developers & Happy users

Javascript Injection

Use WordPress’ Hook
In your Plugin Class:

Executing Javascript
From Markup

Form Submissions

Handle Form Actions
with a Plugin

Error Handling
Gracefully

Let’s play catch

Logging?

Code Comprehension

Method Names That
Make Sense

Verb-Based Methods:

Good Method Name:
get Leads();

Can we do better?

Great Method Name:
get Lead ById(1)
get Leads ByRecruiter(1)
get Recruiter ByLead(1)

Other Examples
findByRecruiter()
addRecruiterToLead()
sortRecruitersByLead()

If-Statements

I (proudly) confess…

I haven’t written an
else statement in 2+
years.

My approach is:
Validate First
Return Early
Process Last

2 Levels of
Indentation*
Not counting classes, try & catch, & method body

This will force you to:
create more methods (DRY! don’t repeat
yourself)
throw more exceptions
do more error checking
think about code-scenarios less

Nitpicking.

Doc Blocks

Code Style (WP-CS)

php code sniffer
https://github.com/squizlabs/PHP_CodeSnif
fer

Install phpcs
php code-sniffer

wordpress code sniffer

Take Away Challenges
• No “else” keyword
• 2 levels of indentation
• No functionality in themes!

Resources

“Object Oriented
Calisthenics”

PHP The Right Way

Thank You!
Chad Windnagle
Software Engineer
Advanced Medical
@drmmr763
Credits
• “Your Code Sucks, Let’s Fix It” - @rdohms / doh.ms
• PHPCS - SquizLabs

Good dev citizen

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