sculpt

A CLI tool for sculpting WP plugins quickly.

Why Sculpt?

Sculpt is a simple, but powerful CLI tool for building enterprise WP plugins very quickly. It uses simple commands to create standard WP features such as Posts, Taxonomies, Meta Boxes, Routes, Menus and so much more. In this way, you can focus more on the business logic of your WordPress plugin than spending time trying to write classes from scratch.

If you are a fan of Laravel and how it presents an Object-Oriented approach to building clean, robust and scalabale PHP applications using the artisan make commands, then you would definitely love Sculpt.

Getting Started

Install via NPM like so:

npm install -g @badasswp/sculpt-cli

Now you should be able to run it from anywhere on your terminal like so:

sculpt

Creating A Plugin

Implementing a new WordPress plugin is as simple as using the plugin command on your terminal like so:

sculpt plugin

This will prompt you for a list of values needed to scaffold a new plugin with all the necessary abstractions, interfaces, base classes & core files, ready for your use.

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To launch your new plugin, you can simply use the command:

yarn boot

This should install all PHP and JS dependencies and launch your new plugin using a .wp-env docker configuration.

To understand how your new plugin is architectured, please take a look at the Design Methodology section.

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Creating A Custom Post Type (CPT)

Implementing a custom post type is as simple as using the post command on your terminal like so:

sculpt post

This will ultimately prompt you for a list of values related to your custom post type like so:

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Once you're done providing those values, your new custom post type would be implemented automatically and wired up correctly to the appropriate WP hooks, ready for use!

Behind the Scenes

Sculpt will attempt to create a custom post type concrete class for you based on the values you have provided as well as the following classes:

• Post Abstraction
• Post Service

The Post abstraction would take care of most of the heavy lifting for your custom post type such as post type registration and its unique characteristics.

The Post service would take of binding the custom post type's logic to the necessary WP hooks at run time.

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Creating A Custom Taxonomy

Implementing a custom taxonomy is as simple as using the taxonomy command on your terminal like so:

sculpt taxonomy

This will ultimately prompt you for a list of values related to your custom taxonomy like so:

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Once you're done providing those values, your new custom taxonomy would be implemented automatically and wired up correctly to the appropriate WP hooks.

Behind the Scenes

Sculpt will attempt to create a custom taxonomy concrete class for you based on the values you have provided as well as the following classes:

• Taxonomy Abstraction
• Taxonomy Service

The Taxonomy abstraction would take care of most of the heavy lifting for your custom taxonomy such as taxonomy registration and defining its options.

The Taxonomy service would take of binding the custom taxonomy's logic to the necessary WP hooks at run time.

Design Methodology

Sculpt uses a design pattern we call FASI (Factory-Singleton). This design pattern is made up of two parts: The factory which holds the services to be instantiated, and the singletons which are the services themselves.

During run time, the plugin loads all the singletons found in the Container by creating a single instance using the Service parent abstraction's get_instance and then proceeds to run its logic by invoking the register method for each of them. The services contain logic that effectively bind to WP hooks at run time.

Container

The Container basically serves as a Factory class for initialising the plugin's Services. This class is responsible for managing and registering various services used by your plugin. You can see this in the code snippet below:

public function __construct() {
    self::$services = [
        \HelloWorld\Services\Auth::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Ajax::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Assets::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Boot::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Controller::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Editor::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Menu::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\MetaBox::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Notices::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Post::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\REST::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Settings::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Taxonomy::class,
        \HelloWorld\Services\Template::class,
    ];
  }

public function register(): void {
    foreach ( self::$services as $service ) {
        ( $service::get_instance() )->register();
    }
}

Services

A Service is basically a Singleton instance which extends the Service abstraction. It contains the high level logic that binds custom logic to WordPress hooks. An example is shown below:

use HelloWorld\Abstracts\Service;
use HelloWorld\Interfaces\Kernel;

class YourService extends Service implements Kernel {
    /**
     * Bind to WP.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function register(): void {
        // bind your hooks here...
    }
}