BEWARE! Development dropped. It will turn into a Glitch sooner than later.
WP Plugin Info is addressed mainly to plugin developers. It lets you show, in a post or page, any kind of information related to a plugin hosted on
WordPress.org. I developed it for my own use on
sitetreeplugin.com, some of the information shown in the homepage and other areas of the website are fetched with this plugin.
Features
- Shortcode-based plugin: you just need the shortcode
[wp-plugin-info] to use it.
- The information retrieved are cached and refreshed once per hour. It is able to efficiently manage the caching of multiple arrays of information (each one related to a different plugin) at the same time.
- Optimised performance: even if you insert the shortcode multiple times into the same page, the access to the cached data will be performed just once.
- Template tags to use the plugin directly into a template file.
Shortcode Attributes
plugin_id (Required)\
Description: The slug name of the plugin whose information you want to retrieve.\
Value: the basename of the url of the plugin page.
For example, the value of
plugin_id for this plugin is
wp-plugin-info, because the url of this plugin page is
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-plugin-info/.
info_id (Required)\
Description: The unique identifier associated to the information to retrieve.\
Accepted values: name, slug, version, author, author_profile, contributors, requires, tested, rating, num_ratings, downloaded, last_updated, added, homepage, download_link, description, installation, screenshots, changelog, faq
default (Optional)\
Description: The string to show if an error occurs while retrieving the information.\
Default: The character "-".
date_format (Optional)\
Description: The format of the date to show. This is an attribute to be used only when retrieving a date.\
Value: A valid
PHP date format.
Template Tags
The following tags can be used directly into a template file.
<?php wp_plugin_info( $info_id, $args ); ?>
$info_id (Required): a string value\
$args (Optional): an associative array
`<?php
$args = array(
'plugin_id' => WPPI_PLUGIN_ID,
'default' => '-',
'date_format' => null
);
?>`
If you want to manipulate the result, use the tag below instead. The arguments are the same.
<?php get_wp_plugin_info( $info_id, $args ); ?>
Configuration
The plugin is ready to use just after its activation, however, there are a couple settings you can customise through the php constants listed below.\
It is recommended to define these constants in your
wp-config.php file instead of directly editing them in the main plugin file. In the latter case you should set them every time you update the plugin.
WPPI_CACHE_EXPIRATION: cannot be set a value lower than 600 (seconds).WPPI_PLUGIN_ID: if set, you don't need to include the attribute plugin_id into the shortcode. However, The attribute plugin_id has an higher priority, so it can override the value of the constant.WPPI_ENABLE_SHORTCODE: the default value is true. Set it to false if you want to disable the shortcode feature – recommended if you don't use it.
In Practice
Suppose you want to show the information listed in the homepage of
sitetreeplugin.com and you set the php constant
WPPI_PLUGIN_ID, what you would write in a post or page should look like this:
Version: [wp-plugin-info info_id="version"]\
Requires: WordPress [wp-plugin-info info_id="requires"] or higher\
Release date: [wp-plugin-info info_id="last_updated" date_format="Y-n-j"]\
Downloads: [wp-plugin-info info_id="downloaded"]
The same can be achieved with the template tag:
Version: <?php wp_plugin_info( 'version' ); ?>\
Requires: WordPress <?php wp_plugin_info( 'requires' ); ?> or higher\
Release date: <?php wp_plugin_info( 'last_updated', array( 'date_format' => 'Y-n-j' ) ); ?>\
Downloads: <?php wp_plugin_info( 'downloaded' ); ?>
1.1.3
- The cache expiration date is now displayed in the admin area.
- Minor changes.
1.1.2
Fixed an error in the documentation.
1.1.1
- Added the template tag
get_wp_plugin_info()
1.1
- Reduced the number of database queries performed in the worst case.
- Added a button to delete the cache.
- Added the template tag
wp_plugin_info().
- Added the configuration constant
WPPI_ENABLE_SHORTCODE.
- Minor fixes.
1.0