WordPress.org

Codex Resources

Plugin API

Introduction

This page documents the API (Application Programming Interface) hooks available to WordPress plugin developers, and how to use them.

This article assumes you have already read Writing a Plugin, which gives an overview (and many details) of how to develop a plugin. This article is specifically about the API of "Hooks", also known as "Filters" and "Actions", that WordPress uses to set your plugin in motion.

Note: this information applies to WordPress Versions 1.2 and higher. Before Version 1.2, modifications were called "hacks" and involved editing the source code of WordPress itself.

Hooks, Actions and Filters

Hooks are provided by WordPress to allow your plugin to 'hook into' the rest of WordPress; that is, to call functions in your plugin at specific times, and thereby set your plugin in motion. There are two kinds of hooks:

You can sometimes accomplish the same goal with either an action or a filter. For example, if you want your plugin to change the text of a post, you might add an action function to publish_post (so the post is modified as it is saved to the database), or a filter function to the_content (so the post is modified as it is displayed in the browser screen).

Actions

Actions are triggered by specific events that take place in WordPress, such as publishing a post, changing themes, or displaying a page of the admin panel. Your plugin can respond to the event by executing a PHP function, which might do one or more of the following:

The basic steps to making this happen (described in more detail below) are:

Create an Action Function

The first step in creating an action in your plugin is to create a PHP function with the action functionality of your plugin, and put it in your plugin file (your plugin file must go into the wp-content/plugins directory). For example, if you want your friends to get an email message whenever you create a new post, you might define the following function:

function email_friends($post_ID)  {
    $friends = 'bob@example.org,susie@example.org';
    mail($friends, "sally's blog updated", 
      'I just put something on my blog: http://blog.example.com');
    return $post_ID;
}

For most actions, your function should accept a single parameter (usually the post or comment ID, depending on the action). Some actions take more than one parameter -- check the documentation for the action (if available) or the WordPress source code for more information. Besides the one parameter, you can also access the global variables of WordPress, and call other WordPress functions (or functions in your plugin file).

NOTE: Keep in mind that other plugins or the WordPress core may already be using the function name you have thought of. See Avoiding Function Name Collisions for more information.

Hook to WordPress

After your function is defined, the next step is to "hook" or register it with WordPress. To do this, call add_action() in the global execution space of your plugin file:

 add_action ( 'hook_name', 'your_function_name', [priority], [accepted_args] );

where:

In the example above, we would put the following line in the plugin file:

add_action('publish_post', 'email_friends');

Likewise, you can also Remove Actions from action hooks. See that section for details.

Install and Activate

The last step in getting your action hook to work is to install the file and activate the plugin. The PHP function you wrote and the add_action call must go into a PHP file together, and the PHP file must be installed in the wp-content/plugins directory. Once it is installed, you will need to visit the admin section of WordPress and activate your plugin; see Managing Plugins for more details.

Current Hooks For Actions

See Plugin API/Action Reference for a current list of action hooks in WordPress, and links to previous versions of WordPress.

Filters

Filters are functions that WordPress passes data through, at certain points in execution, just before taking some action with the data (such as adding it to the database or sending it to the browser screen). Filters sit between the database and the browser (when WordPress is generating pages), and between the browser and the database (when WordPress is adding new posts and comments to the database); most input and output in WordPress passes through at least one filter. WordPress does some filtering by default, and your plugin can add its own filtering.

The basic steps to adding your own filters to WordPress (described in more detail below) are:

Create a Filter Function

A filter function takes as input the unmodified data, and returns modified data (or in some cases, a null value to indicate the data should be deleted or disregarded). If the data is not modified by your filter, then the original data must be returned so that subsequent plugins can continue to modify the value if necessary.

So, the first step in creating a filter in your plugin is to create a PHP function to do the filtering, and put it in your plugin file (your plugin file must go into the wp-content/plugins directory). For example, if you want to make sure that your posts and comments contain no profanity, you might define a global variable with a list of forbidden words, and then create the following PHP function:

function filter_profanity($content) {
    global $profanities;
    foreach($profanities as $profanity) {
        $content=str_ireplace($profanity,'{censored}',$content);
    }
    return $content;
}

NOTE: Keep in mind that other plugins or the WordPress core may already be using the function name you have thought of. See the Plugin Development Suggestions for more information.

Hook in your Filter

After your function is defined, the next step is to "hook" or register it with WordPress. To do this, call add_filter in the global execution space of your plugin file:

[[Function_Reference/add_filter|add_filter]]('hook_name', 'your_filter', [priority], [accepted_args]);

where:

In the example above, we would put the following in the main executing section of the plugin file, to tell WordPress to filter comments for profanity:

[[Function_Reference/add_filter|add_filter]]('comment_text','filter_profanity');

You can also remove filters from filter hooks using the WordPress function remove_filter(). See Removing Actions and Filters.

Install and Activate

The last step in getting your filter hook to work is to install the file and activate the plugin. The PHP function you wrote and the add_filter call must go into a PHP file together, and the PHP file must be installed in the wp-content/plugins directory. Once it is installed, you will need to visit the admin section of WordPress and activate your plugin; see Managing Plugins for more details.

Current Hooks for Filters

See Plugin API/Filter Reference for a current list of filter hooks in WordPress, and links to previous versions of WordPress.

Example

This is an example, as described by Ozh on the wp-hackers email list, for a plugin to modify (or overwrite) the default bloginfo() function. This will require modifying a core function behavior.

add_filter('bloginfo', 'mybloginfo', 1, 2);
add_filter('bloginfo_url', 'mybloginfo', 1, 2);

function mybloginfo($result='', $show='') {
        switch ($show) {
        case 'wpurl':
                $result = SITE_URL;
                break;
        case 'template_directory':
                $result = TEMPL_DIR;
                break;
        default: 
        }
        return $result;
}

Removing Actions and Filters

In some cases, you may find that you want your plugin to disable one of the actions or filters built into WordPress, or added by another plugin. You can do that by calling remove_filter('filter_hook','filter_function') or remove_action('action_hook','action_function').

For example, remove_action('publish_post','generic_ping'); would prevent your weblog from sending pings whenever a new post is created.

Note that if a hook was registered using a priority other than the default of 10, then you must also specify the priority in the call to remove_action(). Also note that in general, you shouldn't remove anything unless you know what it does and why it does it -- check the WordPress or other plugin source code to be sure.

Filters and Actions Applied By Default

The most reliable way to find the filters and actions enabled by default in WordPress is to search for add_filter and add_action in the WordPress core files.

WordPress 2.1

In WordPress 2.1, most of the default filters and actions are added from the file wp-includes/default-filters.php. A few others are in the following files:

WordPress 1.5

Most default filters and actions are added in wp-includes/default-filters.php in WordPress 1.5.

Functions You Can Override

Besides the hooks (actions and filters) described above, another way for a plugin to modify WordPress's behavior is to override WordPress functions. In fact, there is a small set of functions that WordPress intends for plugins to redefine. WordPress loads these functions only if they are still undefined after all plugins have been loaded, to facilitate this.

These functions are defined in file pluggable.php. Here is a list (for Version 2.1 - needs updating); documentation for at least some of them can be found in the Function Reference: