What action should I hook into when adding roles and capabilities?

Question

I'm going to be using add_role() and $role->add_cap() to set up a new custom role and attach a new capability to existing roles.

I'm wondering where the best place to do this is? Obviously I can do it straight inside functions.php and be done with it. But is this the best practice? Do I only need to do this on admin_init? or should I do it on init?

I'm not entirely sure what the best practices are around using init action hooks rather than just dropping a direct function call inside functions.php.

thanks for your input!

Answer 1

When adding a role and capabilities you only need to run the code once since the roles and capabilities are saved to the database when using add_role or ->add_cap functions so just like Andy said you can use after_setup_theme for this kind of action but add some kind of check so it only runs once, like register_activation_hook or using options:

add_action('after_setup_theme','my_add_role_function');

function my_add_role_function(){
    $roles_set = get_option('my_roles_are_set');
    if(!$roles_set){
        add_role('my_role', 'my_roleUser', array(
            'read' => true, // True allows that capability, False specifically removes it.
            'edit_posts' => true,
            'delete_posts' => true,
            'upload_files' => true 
        ));
        update_option('my_roles_are_set',true);
    }
}

Answer 2

For plugins, I have had success using plugins_loaded for this. For themes, I would use after_setup_theme.