As most of you know, WordPress is open-source and free to the public to use and build upon. This is great because its a platform that will constantly be updated by people that truly care about it, and it is also extremely easy to obtain and use as a website platform. Although having an open-source platform is great in many ways, it also means that anyone can publish free plugins that conflict with WordPress features. So how do we, the developers, create plugins that have the least probability of conflicting with WordPress? One simple and very effective way is to use Object-Oriented programming.
What is Object-Oriented Programming?
It is a programming style that aims at creating modular and reusable objects that interact with each other. This is basically just a logical programming technique that incorporates best practices of coding.
What’s the difference between Object-Oriented and Procedural code?
Procedural programming refers to the step by step way this programming style executes code. This is most commonly found in small easy plugins that only rely on functions to modularize the plugin. This means that all code is usually written into functions that call upon each other based off of events or triggers. On the other hand, Object-Oriented programming refers to structured objects that are instantiated and then used to perform tasks. This is very useful because code is now modular and easy to build upon and use.
Why you should always use Object-Oriented Programming in WordPress?
By using an Object-Oriented Programming style, you are insuring that all your functions will never conflict with WordPress or other plugins. Also, using this programming style makes your plugin modular and very easy to upgrade or reuse elsewhere. Finally, it makes your code look very neat and it is easily readable by other developers.
Overall, Object-Oriented Programming refers to structured objects that are instantiated and then used to perform tasks. It is the only type of programming style you should use while developing WordPress plugins since it makes your plugin modular, easy to read, and non-conflicting with other plugins.