I plan to place collectively a mini-series masking the fundamentals of correctly planning, engineering, launching and sustaining a WooCommerce store. Sooner or later as I write extra articles I’ll hyperlink them collectively, for now, this primary article will cowl the fundamentals of making a customized plugin in your WooCommerce website, and offer you a plugin skeleton to obtain and use as a place to begin. This text assumes a familiarity with primary WordPress plugin growth, and expands upon the WooCommerce doc article on making a plugin. So, let’s get going!

Why a Customized Plugin?

WooCommerce is a superb ecommerce answer, however creating a web site or store is a really private endeavor, and you might be more likely to need to change some performance or habits of the inventory WooCommerce plugin. Our pure tendency is to look for easy options, and subsequently we will be drawn to modifying the core information. Resist this base urge! Repeat after me: “I can’t modify the core information.” Happily, although not as versatile as Magento, WooCommerce supplies a number of motion hooks, filters, template information, and “template features” to permit for customizations. Writing a plugin permits us to cleanly separate and preserve monitor of our customized code, and renders WooCommerce upgrades a comparatively painless course of.

What’s an motion?

An motion in WordPress lets you execute code triggered at a selected level within the web page response course of, as an example upon displaying a remark.

What’s a filter?

Comparable conceptually to an motion, filters will let you modify information at particular factors within the WordPress web page response course of, as an example eradicating profanity from a remark.

What’s a template?

A template is a file that accommodates a mixture of HTML and PHP code and renders a web page, part of a web page, or an e-mail. Templates will be overridden by making a file of the identical identify in a particular location inside your theme or baby theme.

What’s a template perform?

A “template perform” is a perform that begins with if ( ! function_exists( 'function_name' ) {… In case your plugin defines this perform first it will likely be referred to as rather than the default perform and will let you override its habits with your personal.

Writing a customized plugin largely lets you alter the performance and habits of WooCommerce; to customise the appear and feel the popular technique is to create a customized baby theme. I received’t cowl that course of on this article sequence as it’s already described effectively within the WordPress codex and there isn’t a lot WooCommerce-specific so as to add. The exception is maybe the best way that you just override WooCommerce template information, which I wrote about in one other article.

The Plugin Skeleton

I favor to call my WooCommerce customized plugin woocommerce-company-name, so if your organization is Acme, inc, you would possibly use woocommerce-acme. Though not strictly vital with a self-authored plugin, it’s good follow to examine if WooCommerce is lively, and likewise carry out a examine to make sure a category with the identical identify as your plugin doesn’t exist already:

if ( in_array( 'woocommerce/woocommerce.php', apply_filters( 'active_plugins', get_option( 'active_plugins' ) ) ) ) {
  if ( ! class_exists( 'WC_Acme' ) ) {

Subsequent, it’s once more good follow although not vital, to load any translated strings for the plugin. Doing so lets you use the varied translate features resembling __( 'Some textual content', 'wc_acme' ) and simply present translation information at some future date.

    load_plugin_textdomain( 'wc_acme', false, dirname( plugin_basename( __FILE__ ) ) . '/' );

I favor to outline the majority of my plugin features inside a category, which successfully scopes the features you write and retains you from having to fret about perform identify clashes with all the opposite WordPress core and plugin features. There are just a few generally used lifecycle motion hooks which might be included in our skeleton plugin class. Lastly, the plugin class might be instantiated, assuming that WooCommerce is lively, and the category identify isn’t already taken.

    class WC_Acme {

      public perform __construct() {
        // referred to as simply earlier than the woocommerce template features are included
        add_action( 'init', array( $this, 'include_template_functions' ), 20 );

        // referred to as solely after woocommerce has completed loading
        add_action( 'woocommerce_init', array( $this, 'woocommerce_loaded' ) );

        // referred to as in any case plugins have loaded
        add_action( 'plugins_loaded', array( $this, 'plugins_loaded' ) );

        // signifies we're operating the admin
        if ( is_admin() ) {
          // ...
        }

        // signifies we're being served over ssl
        if ( is_ssl() ) {
          // ...
        }

        // handle the rest that must be performed instantly upon plugin instantiation, right here within the constructor
      }

      /**
       * Override any of the template features from woocommerce/woocommerce-template.php
       * with our personal template features file
       */
      public perform include_template_functions() {
        embody( 'woocommerce-template.php' );
      }

      /**
       * Deal with something that wants woocommerce to be loaded.
       * For example, in the event you want entry to the $woocommerce world
       */
      public perform woocommerce_loaded() {
        // ...
      }

      /**
       * Deal with something that wants all plugins to be loaded
       */
      public perform plugins_loaded() {
        // ...
      }
    }

    // lastly instantiate our plugin class and add it to the set of globals

    $GLOBALS['wc_acme'] = new WC_Acme();

Wrapping Up

When you have been already conversant in WordPress/WooCommerce growth there most likely wasn’t a lot new for you right here, however hopefully in the event you’re new to the sport then the above explanations and strategies will show useful in getting you began. Both manner, one of the simplest ways to be taught the multitude of WooCommerce actions and filters out there for personalisation is to browse the supply code. Additionally do not forget that along with hooking into actions/filters and including performance, you may simply as simply unhook present actions/filters to take away plugin habits, or change it wholesale.

The trick is to carry out the remove_action()/remove_filter() calls after the goal motion is hooked to (as an example inside our woocommerce_loaded() perform above), and to at all times bear in mind to supply all of the arguments to the take away features that have been handed within the add features, optionally available parameters and all.