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If you need to see all svn:externals in a directory structure, this is your huckleberry:

Logging this here for my own future reference.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’m a bit baffled by all of the late night TV shuffling, arguing, debating, etc. Are there still people that watch TV (besides sporting events) at their broadcast time?

I’ve had a DVR since 2002 – I can hardly fathom watching TV another way.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I recently put new releases of my Twitter Tools plugin – basically patches so that it would work in WordPress 2.9 on versions of PHP prior to 5.2. This is an interesting situation, where I hadn’t really done anything wrong in the plugin and the WP core team hadn’t really done anything wrong in the way they implemented their JSON functionality for versions of PHP prior to 5.2. It just happened that the bits of code weren’t compatible with each other.

Sure it was frustrating. I was in a situation where there was a bit of public outcry about my plugin being “broken”. All of a sudden, something that used to work fine didn’t (for some). The result? I spent a good deal of time debugging an issue with my plugin that I didn’t cause and couldn’t reproduce.¹ However when you step back and look at the situation, I’m not sure there is a clear-cut target to blame here. Everyone’s intentions were pure. The point is, this is an interesting case study and one that both the WP plugin and theme devs and the WP Core devs can learn from.

Situation

Versions of PHP prior to 5.2 do not include native functions for encoding and decoding JSON formatted data.

The solution in Twitter Tools prior to the releases last weekend: include a PHP library (Services_JSON) along with the plugin, wrap it in a check to make sure that it isn’t already included, and use it instead of the native PHP functions.

The solution in WordPress 2.9: define the equivalent versions of the native PHP encode and decode functions in the core, include a PHP library (Services_JSON) in those functions and load it if needed.

So we had a situation in some WordPress server configurations where my plugin loaded the library, then WP core tried to load the same library and PHP didn’t like that very much.

The WP 2.9 solution provides us with an interesting situation. I still wanted to support versions of WP prior to 2.9, which means I still need to include my copy of the library. However I also don’t want it to break in 2.9, so I need to make my inclusion of the library compatible with the WP 2.9 approach.

Solution

Use the same approach in my plugin that WP 2.9 does. WP 2.9 checks to see if the PHP function json_encode(), etc. exists, and defines it if it doesn’t. If Twitter Tools does the same thing and loads after the WP version (which is loaded from compat.php), it will only define those functions and include the library as needed. Based on feedback, this approach is working for both pre-2.9 versions of WordPress and WP 2.9.x.

Lessons

Plugin/theme devs, be careful when including a compatibility library that might get added to WP core in the future. Try to structure your code in such a way that it will continue to work even if this happens.

WP core devs, when adding a library consider the plugins that might already be including that library and do so in a way that lets everything continue to work.

Why wasn’t this caught in beta testing of WordPress 2.9? It’s pretty simple – even though I tested some of my plugins in pre-releases of 2.9, I did not test them with older versions of PHP (required to trigger this bug). I’m guessing that most of the developers that were beta testing were also running new versions of PHP. A true application testing matrix is not realistic for WordPress + plugins + themes.

Take a look at the diff for an example, I think this technique is portable to other plugins that may experience this same problem.

Also, I created a ticket in Trac to try to make this work a little more smoothly going forward. Thanks to the core team for accepting the patch.

1. Trying to patch a problem that you can’t reproduce will inevitably require a few point release. [back]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Version 2.1 of my Twitter Tools plugin is now available. Twitter Tools creates a two-way integration between your Twitter account and your WordPress blog. You can send your blog posts to Twitter and bring your tweets back to your blog for display, archiving, or creating posts from them.

This version has a bunch of changes including a fix for the issues with WordPress 2.9 and PHP < 5.2.

The download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.

If you have any trouble with this, please contact the WordPress HelpCenter (303-395-1346) or you can try the WP Support Forums.

Enjoy!

Changes

• Add a shortcode to display recent tweets
• Change how Services_JSON is included to be compatible with changes in WP 2.9 and PHP < 5.2
• Better RegEx for username and hashtag linking
• Exclude replies in aktt_latest_tweet() function (if option selected)
• Digest functionality is marked as experimental, they need to be fundamentally rewritten to avoid race conditions experienced by some users
• Make install code a little smarter
• Add unique index on tweet ID columns, remove duplicates and optimize table
• Track the currently installed version for easier upgrades in the future
• Add action on Update Tweets (aktt_update_tweets)
• Use standard meta boxes (not backwards compatible) for post screen settings
• Use site_url() and admin_url(), losing backward compatibility but gaining SSL compatibility
• Added WordPress HelpCenter contact info to settings page
• Misc code cleanup and bug fixes
• Added language dir and .pot file

Bit.ly plugin

• Added a trim() on the API Key for people that struggle with copy/paste
• Changed RegEx for finding URLs in tweet content (thanks Porter Maus)
• Added a j.mp option
• Cleaned up the settings form
• Use admin_url(), losing backward compatibility but gaining SSL compatibility

Exclude Category plugin

• Use admin_url(), losing backward compatibility but gaining SSL compatibility

Hashtags plugin

• Use admin_url(), losing backward compatibility but gaining SSL compatibility

Plugins

In version 2.0 I added the ability for Twitter Tools to be extended via plugins and created the plugins included in the default plugin. Other folks are creating plugins for Twitter Tools as well. You can find more Twitter Tools plugins here.

Have you created a plugin for Twitter Tools? Let me know so I can add it to the list.

Popularity: 1% [?]