Route Pages going somewhere 01

September 16, 2014 3-minute read

After much set up and some more test-related experimentation I’ve decided to walk the same way WP Router took to trigger Route Pages functions.

The problem

Route pages offer is two-fold: on one side the WordPress plugin wraps WP Router methods and hooks in a Laravel-like fashion to allow for easy and streamlined usage of the routing possibility (see the wp-routing package at its core) while, on the other hand, it tries to make routes usable by the end-user creating “route pages” for some routes.
The first plugin function is firmly in developer hands allowing any interaction with it by calls like this in a plugin file

WPRouting_Route::get('hello', function(){
    echo "Hello there";
})->withTitle('Hello there!')
  ->withTemplate(array(
    'sample-page',
    dirname(__FILE__) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'sample-page.php'
    );

I’ve been thinking about the second plugin function and came to the conclusion that it will stay in the same field since it’s up to the developer to decide:

which routes to use (first plugin function)
which of those routes will generate a route page

A first review

I can describe my first implementation of the route page creation process just by pasting some test code

   public function it_should_create_a_route_page_if_a_persisted_route_meta_info_is_in_the_db(UITester $I)
{
    // Prepare
    // arrays are stored serialized in wp db
    $routeMeta = serialize(array('route-one' => array('title' => 'Route one', 'permalink' => 'route-one', 'generate' => 'page')));
    $I->haveOptionInDatabase(RoutePages_GeneratingRoute::OPTION_ID, $routeMeta);

    // Execute
    $I->loginAsAdmin();
    $I->amOnPluginsPage();
    $I->activatePlugin('wp-router');
    $I->activatePlugin('route-pages');

    // Verify
    $I->amOnPagesPage();
    $I->see('Route one', '.page-title');
}

What’s happening is that activating the plugin will trigger route page creation; creating route pages at plugin activation time seemed like a good idea except that there are situations and setups where activation/deactivation hooks might not get called.
I will add a filter-based route page creation system allowing developers wishing to generate route pages to:

set a route as a page generating one
trigger route page creation returning truthy or falsy values in a filter hook

The filter

The route generation is happening if truthy values are returned in the RoutePages_should_generate_route_pages filter. The idea is that I might install the plugin to use WP Router methods wrapping alone and not be interested in route pages generation at all; it works like a dead man trigger.
The workflow to use the route page generation is to add a route and setting it to persist in a plugin or theme

// plugin.php

WPRouting_Route::get('my-route', function(){
    echo "This is my route";
})->withTitle('Not a page')
  ->withTemplate(array(
    'sample-page',
    dirname(__FILE__) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'sample-page.php'
    )->shouldBePersisted();

and then hook into the filter to generate the route pages and return truthy values

add_filter(RoutePages::SHOULD_GENERATE_ROUTE_POSTS, '__return_true');

I’m staying with this mechanic and will be testing ti further to spot shortcomings and pitfalls and will be removing UI for the route pages not to give the user a wrong idea about his possibilities.

The problem

A first review

The filter

Next