WordCast

Plugin Picks 4: WP Function Reference

By davemoyer, posted March 10, 2010 at 6:00 am | No Comments ยป

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Today on Plugin Picks, we’ve got a WordPress plugin for all the geeky theme coders or plugin developers out there. For those WordPress users who have trouble remembering all the various PHP functions used when coding extensions for the platform, the WP Function Reference WordPress plugin adds a dashboard widget for quick reference.

That’s all for this week on Plugin Picks. See you on Monday!

No Responses to “Plugin Picks 4: WP Function Reference”

  1. Jacob Santos says:
    March 10, 2010 at 3:03 pm

    This plugin is not worth anything, least of which to coders. I seriously think this is a joke, since it reads that way.

    1. The breaking and entering of php tags is pointless and might cause PHP bugs when someone edits the theme and thinks adding a new line will be “helpful” to formatting.

    2. The lack of proper use of tabs makes the code read terribly.

    3. Function names are pointless, comments are pointless. “show_me_which_functions_are_available” would be better named “display_functions_list()”. “show_me_which_functions_are_available_dashboard_widget_function” is an exercise of pointless aliasing, and further tells me that this a joke plugin.

    4. “$funx[user]” should be $funx['user'] causing a notice in the PHP logs.

    5. Not all of the functions will be listed on the codex. Given that many of the plugins functions are not going to be listed on the codex as well.

    6. phpdoc.wordpress.org is a better place to get documentation on WordPress functions.

    7. The plugins should at least check for the page existence before linking and caching the results to save time.

    Reply
  2. Kym says:
    March 10, 2010 at 8:48 pm

    Thank-you for the comment about the plugin Jacob.

    I have reached out and forwarded your suggestions to the developer of this plugin.

    Reply
  3. Jacob Santos says:
    March 11, 2010 at 8:19 am

    I was going to contact the person myself, but I couldn’t exactly find contact information. Truthfully, I’m not sure whether I should be amused, disappointed, or happy. What the plugin achieves and does so quite well is provide an simple example at how to create a dashboard widget. While the plugin itself isn’t all that great, it could also be used as a learning tool, “Which parts of this plugin could be improved?”

    I also believe there was another plugin which has a better method accessing the phpdoc documentation along with the codex, but I forget what the name or where the plugin is.

    Reply
  4. Nicolas says:
    March 11, 2010 at 1:34 pm

    Isn’t there a website that does function look-ups as well!?! (at least I thought I used it). Also if you have FF you can put the WordPress Codex as one of your search clients in your browser bar.

    Reply
  5. Jacob Santos says:
    March 18, 2010 at 11:41 am

    Yeah. http://phpdoc.wordpress.org/ or http://phpdoc.ftwr.co.uk and http://xref.ftwr.co.uk.

    Reply

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