README

Overview

This is a WordPress plugin that will manage updates for your custom WordPress plugins or themes that are hosted on external repositories such as GitHub and GitLab. This is an alternative option to having your theme or plugin hosted on WordPress.org. Right now this only supports GitHub and GitLab repositories out of the box, more may come, but you can create your own custom option for any platform by extending the \PackageUpgrader\V1\Context\AbstractRemote class from this project in your code.

How to use

This plugin is designed to be easy to use. Its configuration is done using your existing plugin/theme metadata comments already defined in your plugin or theme's main file, with a couple extra metadata comments for where to find the source repo.

Step 1

Install via composer packagist

composer require pfaciana/wp-update-checker

NOTE: Alternative option, you can download the package as a standalone plugin alongside your plugin or theme. To do this, go to https://github.com/pfaciana/wp-update-checker/releases and download the Release Asset named wp-update-checker.zip from the lasted release. Then go to your WordPress admin and choose Plugin > Add New Plugin from the side menu and upload the wp-update-checker.zip and click Install Now.

Both options will work, but using composer and bundling it inside your plugin/theme is recommended.

Step 2

Init the PackageUpgrader Plugin or Theme instance in your code...

# For your plugin
add_action( 'rpuc/init', fn() => new PackageUpgrader\V1\Plugin );

# For your theme
add_action( 'rpuc/init', fn() => new PackageUpgrader\V1\Theme );

Place this code in the root of your plugin or theme. It will automatically find your plugin/theme's main file if it's in the same directory. If it's not, then you'll have to pass the location of the main file of your plugin/theme to tell the update checker where to find your plugin/theme.

# For your plugin
add_action( 'rpuc/init', fn() => new PackageUpgrader\V1\Plugin( WP_PLUGIN_DIR . "/your-plugin/index.php") );

# For your theme
add_action( 'rpuc/init', fn() => new PackageUpgrader\V1\Theme( WP_THEME_DIR . "/your-theme/style.css" ) );

Step 3

Add in the necessary WordPress comments into your plugin or theme's main file. For example,

/**
 * Plugin Name: Your Plugin's Name
 * Plugin URI: https://example.com/
 * Version: 1.2.3
 * Description: A WordPress plugin that does something
 * Author: Your Name
 * Author URI: https://example.com/
 * GitHub URI: owner/repo
 * Release Asset: release-asset.zip
 * Requires PHP: 7.4
 * Requires at least: 5.4
 * Compatible up to: 6.4
 * License: GPLv2 only
 * License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
 */

Most of these metadata comments you'll already have in your plugin/theme's main file. It supports all the WordPress metadata comments (like Plugin/Theme Name, Plugin/Theme URI, Version, Description, Author, Author URI, Requires at least, Requires PHP, Compatible up to, Tags, etc) and will use them in the plugin/theme dialog overlay. It also supports most of the WordPress plugin/theme api status fields (like Homepage, Donate Link, Active Installs, etc) from the plugins_api/themes_api filter hooks. You can also have your own code hook into these as well.

In addition to the standard WordPress metadata comments, it also supports a few custom metadata comments to help find the source repo. The only required one is the GitHub URI or GitLab URI metadata comment. This is your username (or organization name) and repository name, as defined in the repo's url. The rest are optional. Release Asset and Remote File are only used if you have a special build process that creates your plugin/theme. If your build creates a release asset that should be used instead of the default source code zip, use the Release Asset key. If your build process dynamically creates the main plugin/theme file (which means it does not exist in the source code of the repo) use Remote File to define which file in your repo has the metadata comments. You can enter a json file here, and it will look for the extra.wordpress key and parse that as the metadata comments.

This plugin's custom metadata comments

Composer Smart Autoloader

This projects also comes with Composer Smart Autoloader installed as a dependency, but in order to take advantage of it you'll need to init it in your own code like this:

add_action( 'plugins_loaded', function () {
	\Render\Autoload\ClassLoader::getInstance();
}, PHP_INT_MIN );

For more details on what Composer Smart Autoloader is and how to use it, see Composer Smart Autoloader.