__FILE__ in WordPress plugins

Question

I'm using Sidebar Generator in all my themes.

The plugin works perfectly normal from "plugins" directory, but I want to embed it somehow to my themes, so it won't display on Installed Plugins list.

I've just copied sidebar_generator.php (the whole code is luckily in one file) to mytheme/plugins and included it in functions.php

require_once (MY_PLUGINS . '/sidebar_generator.php');  

Now, it worked for all other plugins, but not for this one! This way when I click on "Sidebars" it refreshes the actual page instead of loading plugin's admin_page.

Any ideas why is it happening and how to make it working?

I believe the problem lays here:

add_submenu_page('themes.php', 'Sidebars', 'Sidebars', 'manage_options', __FILE__, array('sidebar_generator','admin_page'));

Chaning FILE to something else helps, but I'm not sure how to point this submenu link at the actual plugins admin page.

Answer 1

It should work (and does when I test on a new WP install) with __FILE__, though it's not recommended because it exposes the server path and is just generally an ugly URL. You can replace it with a unique identifier like 'sb-generator-options' or whatever really, as long as it's unique. the important part is the last param that tells it what function to use to render the page.

Are you maybe moving add_submenu_page out of the plugin file, or are you just editing it in place?

Answer 2

The __FILE__ will return full path with filename of the file. It's magic method of PHP.