1.
WordPress Code
Architecture
Mario Peshev @no_fear_inc
WordPress Engineer DevWP.eu

2.
Agenda
• Leading Factors
• Frontend
• Backend
• Users
• Database
• Helpers (Forms, etc)
• Others

3.
Mario Peshev
• WordPress Architect @ DevriX
• Former Java/PHP/Python Developer
• WordPress Ambassador
at SiteGround
• @no_fear_inc
• Open Source addict and Cofficer

4.
Personal opinion about different platforms out there
No flame wars intended

5.
Leading Factors
• PHP – most widespread across hosting
vendors
• Inspiration from predecessor (b2/cafelog),
different from Rails and MVC-frameworks
• PHP 5.2.4 support in Core
• LAMP/LEMP stack

6.
Main Differences
• PHP is stateless and single-threaded
• Default stack: Apache + PHP + MySQL
• No MVC or complete OOP support
• Framework out of a CMS (and not vice
versa)
• No non-traditional data storage layers
• No REST support in core (until 4.0)

7.
PHP 5.2.4 support
Supporting 5.2.4 means that we can’t use:
• namespaces
• traits
• Class::{expr}()
• Late Static Binding
• Closures (Anonymous functions)
• Dynamic access to static methods

8.
Frontend

9.
Layouts and Views
• Some MVC frameworks such as CakePHP:

10.
Razor View (ASP.NET)

11.
AJAX
Similar to ng-model/ng-bind in AngularJS

12.
Backend

13.
WordPress Backend
• Flexible default admin panel
• Complete views and listings for post types
• User management and capability control
• Settings, Media manager and much more
• Reusable WP_List_Table Components

14.
Alternative Admins
Different Admin approaches for every
popular CMS
• Scaffolded admin panels from web
frameworks
• Admin components and user management
extensions
Extensibility vs. Complexity Dilemma

15.
Data APIs
• Wrappers and facade across post types
• Unification in options –
add_option, set_theme_mod,set_transient
• Automatically serializing complex objects
• Verifying for new records
• Sanitizing data

16.
Drupal Entity API
You define your data types with most MVC frameworks.
Drupal has the Entity API:

17.
Environment

18.
Default Infrastructure
• These are not available as separate modules/components.

19.
Hooks and DI
• Actions and Filters in WordPress
• Annotations and Attributes in other
languages and platforms
Streamlined vs. Layer-based application
life cycle model

20.
JSF Annotations

21.
PHP has some, too!
Doctrine:

22.
Database

23.
Database
• Post Type API base
• *_Query helper classes
• wpdb class
• Other helper CRUD functions

24.
Challenges with Databases
• Normalization vs. Denormalization
• Data Decoupling
• Data storage choices:

25.
LINQ or even NoSQL

26.
Helpers and Utilities

27.
Forms
• Token generation
• Model-based validaiton
• Unified access control

28.
Hopes for the Settings API

29.
Media Uploader and /uploads
• Media uploader – wp-content/uploads for
private documents

30.
Other Areas
• User Management
• Multisite support
• Tools and Libraries
• Routing
• Performance
• Security
• Packages and [Distributions]

31.
Summary
• WordPress is still AWESOME
• There are just other ways to build an architecture
• Other languages and platforms have their own
strong sides too

32.
Questions?
Tweets as @no_fear_inc
Mario Peshev on LinkedIn
nofearinc on WordPress.org
GitHubering via mpeshev
DevWP.eu - blog

33.
Notes
• Take a look at ExoWP
• Definitely watch To OOP or not to OOP