WordPress plugin development using OOP

I often download plugins to look at the code hoping I’ll learn something from the developers methods and coding style. Often I find myself frustrated reading through poorly written plugins. It’s not that they’re bad developers, they just haven’t focused enough on alternative coding styles and refining how they go about programming their plugins. Here’s a quick step-by-step on how I write my WordPress Plugins hoping to influence other developers.

Steps on how to getting started with plugin developement

Step 1 – Create your file and let it be known as a plugin

Step 2 – Create the objects of your plugin

Step 3 – Adding your actions and filters

Step 4 – Adding settings/options to your plugin

Finish up your code

Reference: Writing a WordPress Plugin Using Classes

I'm not a guru, but I've been working with WordPress for several years now and have quite a few plugins behind my back. Your first mistake I can point out is

along with database table creation

This is wrong. You don't create tables when you work with WordPress, the default schema is flexible enough to fit anything you have in mind. Even complicated plugins such as WP-eCommerce is being rewritten (or already, don't know) to fit the standard WordPress schema. Especially since WordPress 3.0 is already out. This has been mentioned on WordCamp earlier this year.

You can easily fit your players into the Users table. Their attributes could be stored in the Users Meta table, plus you could give them special roles and/or privileges.

Now, if you're really into OOP, you should download some cool plugins out there and read through the code to see how other people do it. As an example I could mention one of my own plugins called Twitter Friendly Links - it's not the best OOP around, but it's definitely a start ;)

You can kick it over to W3 Total Cache afterwards, where you'll see some very impressive stuff and code organization (thanks to Frederick Townes).

Also, some parts of the Codex now show examples in OOP style - the Widget API for instance. I hope to see more soon and hurray for OOP in WordPress! It's a good thing that people ask such questions, it is what motivates the core developers :)

I found a recent post (August 2010) about how to write an Object Oriented WordPress Plugin: http://w3prodigy.com/behind-wordpress/object-oriented-wordpress-plugin/.

Hope this help.