WP Requirements

Hi! I'm a little utility that you can use in your WordPress plugin development.

Include me in your plugin and I will check if the PHP version or the installed WordPress version is the right one. If not, I will let you know and you can halt your script and display a message in WordPress dashboard so the admin will know why your plugin can't be activated.

Usage

Pass the requirements to a new instance of this class like so:

$my_plugin_requirements = new WP_Requirements(
  'My Plugin Name',
  plugin_basename( __FILE__ ),
  array(
    'PHP' => 'x.y.z',
    'WordPress => 'x.y.z.',
    'Extensions' => array(
        'extension_name',
        'another_extension',
    )
  )
);

Replace 'x.y.z' with the semantic version number you want to require. For PHP extension, just pass the extension name as array string values.

You need to specify at least one value in the arguments array. Mind the casing in the array keys.

Then, you can use the following method to know if it passed (will return bool):

$my_requirements_check->pass();

Implementation

There are two ways you can include WP Requirements in your project.

Copy this class

You can copy the class found in /src/wp-requirements.php in this project.

Important! If you choose to do so, please rename this class with the prefix used by your project (for example: from WP_Requirements to My_Plugin_Requirements ). In this way there is less risk of a naming collision between projects.

Use Composer

Include this library with:

$ composer require nekojira/wp-requirements

However, if you choose to do so, remind that Composer can only work with PHP 5.3.0 onwards. If your goal is to require a PHP version check against older versions of PHP, but want to use Composer, you need a workaround.

You could specify an additional autoloader compatible with PHP 5.2, for example using the PHP 5.2 Autoloading for Composer, by including in your package.json file the following:

 "require": {
     "xrstf/composer-php52": "1.*"
 },
 "scripts": {
     "post-install-cmd": [
         "xrstf\\Composer52\\Generator::onPostInstallCmd"
     ],
     "post-update-cmd": [
         "xrstf\\Composer52\\Generator::onPostInstallCmd"
     ],
     "post-autoload-dump": [
         "xrstf\\Composer52\\Generator::onPostInstallCmd"
     ]
 }

Usage example

Either require with include_once or with Composer first, then at the beginning of your plugin, after the plugin headers, place some code like this:

$my_plugin_requirements = new WP_Requirements(
  'My Plugin Name',
    plugin_basename( __FILE__ ),
    array(
        'PHP'       => '5.3.2',
        'WordPress' => '3.9.0',
    ) 
);

if ( $my_plugin_requirements->pass() === false ) {
    // Deactivate the plugin and print an admin notice.
    $my_plugin_requirements->halt();
    // Halt the execution of the rest of the plugin.
    return;
}

// Then from here on, continue with your code.
// Perhaps with `include_once 'includes/main_class.php'`
// which may contain potentially incompatible PHP code.

Resources

WP Requirements was inspired by a post appeared on wordpress.org at https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2015/06/05/policy-on-php-versions/

You can also try WP Update PHP which however only checks for PHP but provides insightful explanations for the users on why they should keep their PHP version up to date.