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1. Our-party
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Hi all,

   I'm trying to learn to write a wordpress plugin by setting myself a goal of witting a user generated glossary plugin after I asked people on twitter what would be useful (well I may as well use my learning experience to be useful for more than just me).

   Anyway, on installation the plugin sets-up a database table, and adds some test data to it, then when the content is displayed a foreach loop changes each phrase and replaces it with a DHTML floaty box.

   the problem is however, I can't work out whats going on with the register_activation_hook, it may be being called and the SQL is failing or it may not be being called (either way I don't have an extra table in the database after I activate the plugin)

   the hook looks like this

   register_activation_hook(__FILE__, "bot_install");

   And the bot_install code like this

   function bot_install()
   {
       global $wpdb;
       $table = $wpdb->prefix."sh_gloss";
   
       $structure = "CREATE TABLE $table (
           id INT(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
           phrase VARCHAR(80) NOT NULL,
           desc VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
   	UNIQUE KEY id (id)
       );";
       $wpdb->query($structure);
   
       // Populate table
       $wpdb->query("INSERT INTO $table(phrase, desc)
           VALUES('Scott Herbert', 'Rockstar Programmer')");
   
   }

   OK so firstly please forgive the ego database entry, it's just for testing...

   Secondly is there something I should have Sean that I've missed? and thirdly (and most importantly) how can I debug "bot_install"? can I just add statements like
   

   echo "in xxxx";

   or will that mess up the headers (since I guess all this code is ran before the main output)

   Thanks in advance
   Scott

2. mrthrust
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Ive been looking into developing a few plugins, and also i find that the register_activation_hook is missing something.
   I've not bothered using the Global variables,

   // What happens when the plugin is activated
   register_activation_hook(__FILE__, 'pluginName_activate');

   below is the function which is run on Activation, it will create a categories table (which it dose after checking phpmyadmin)

   function pluginName_activate() {
   	// Create New Table
     $query = mysql_query("CREATE TABLE pluginName_cat(
   	catID INT( 11 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
   	catName VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL ,
   	catDescription TEXT NOT NULL
          ) ENGINE = MYISAM COMMENT = 'Holds the Category Information';");
   // End Query
   
   $query = mysql_query("INSERT INTO pluginName_cat VALUES ('','catName','Description text is here..'); ");
   }// END pluginName_activate

   After de-activating; I have it set to drop the tables it created, then after re-activating the plugin the tables are created but no values are inserted into the table?

   I'm I missing something here also? would I need to use the Global variables,

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