Blog on WordPress, Yii, jQuery, JavaScript and CSS

How to Create a Table in WordPress Database

Creating a custom table for the WordPress CMS may be necessary in the following cases:

When developing your own plugin
When creating your own theme (e.g., for real estate, car sales or rental, etc.)

In my projects, to create tables or import data into the database, I use the WP function `dbDelta` within the `register_activation_hook()`. Example code:

register_activation_hook(__FILE__, function()
{
	global $wpdb;
	
	require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php');

	dbDelta("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `{$wpdb -> prefix}my_table` (
		`id` INT(11) UNSIGNED NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
		`title` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
		`date_create` INT(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL
	) {$wpdb -> get_charset_collate()};");	
});

2018-02-03 Pavel WordPress CommentsNo Comments

How to determine the region by IP in PHP using the DB

In this article, we’ll look at one way to determine a user’s location based on their IP address — specifically, using an existing database of regions and assigned IP address ranges.

There are many such databases available. I happened to work with a database from ip2location.com. I can’t say anything bad about it — it correctly identified my region and those of some of my clients.

The first thing we need is to download the database file. They provide it in CSV format, and you can get it from this page.

Importing the IP and Region Data File

Follow the instructions in the description to save time. Initially, I tried importing the data via phpMyAdmin using CSV import, and that took significantly longer than a console-based import.

2018-01-27 Pavel PHP CommentsNo Comments

How to disable date filter in posts or custom post types

Sometimes there are cases when, in custom post types (created via the `register_post_type()` function), or even in default post types like post or page, we need to disable (remove) the date filter dropdown. This dropdown shows the month and year when posts were created on our site.

Searching the official documentation didn't yield much, so I had to dig into the code and find the necessary filter. I discovered the `disable_months_dropdown` filter, which takes two parameters — the display state of the dropdown and the post type.

Example of using the filter:

add_filter('disable_months_dropdown', function($bool, $post_type) {
	if($post_type == 'type_order')
	{
		return true;
	}
	return $bool;
}, 1, 2);

where:
$bool — whether to display the date dropdown (default is false, meaning the filter is disabled and the dropdown will be shown)
$post_type — the current post type

Note that you can also get the current post type using the `get_current_screen()` function and its `post_type` property. That is:

get_current_screen() -> post_type

And I have a feeling that a similar method could be used to disable the category filter as well (needs to be tested).

2018-01-20 Pavel WordPress CommentsNo Comments

How to Automate Routine Tasks in WordPress Using the wp-cli Console Utility

An important “non-news” for WordPress site developers. Have you heard about the command-line utility called “wp-cli”? I’ve been working with WP for a long time, but only found out about it about six months ago.

wp-cli is an amazing tool for developers who manage a bunch of WP sites on their local machine (and not just local ones). Wp-cli allows you to work with WordPress via the command line, minimizing the time you spend on installing the engine, updating it, as well as installing and updating themes and plugins for it.
To be honest, I haven't explored all of its features deeply, but I'll describe the basic functionality and capabilities.

Installation

All instructions are provided for Linux OS.
Download the phar archive with the utility to your machine:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar

Set execute permissions:

chmod +x wp-cli.phar

Move the file to your system’s program directory (to access it from anywhere):

sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp

2018-01-13 Pavel WordPress CommentsNo Comments

How to Add Custom JavaScript Code to WordPress

While working on one of the WP projects, I needed to add some JS code. Normally, for such tasks, I use separate script files. However, in this case, the code was minimal, so I decided to place it directly into the HTML "body" of the document.
To do this, use the following PHP code:

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', function(){
	if(!wp_script_is( 'jquery', 'done' ))
	{
		wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery' );
	}
	wp_add_inline_script( 'jquery-migrate', 'alert("Hello")' );
});

Here's what we are doing:

2018-01-06 Pavel WordPress CommentsNo Comments