Is there any plugin development framework

Question

Since I am new to WordPress plugin development I have been examining the internal structure of many plugins. I have found that most of them don't fit any pattern and so understanding how they work can be difficult.

I was wondering if there is more generalized way of plugin development, possibly with a framework, other than the methods described in official documentation.

Answer 1

AFAIK, there's no official/standard framework, and there will be as many plugin development styles as there are shades of white in north pole.

I'd say WordPress Coding Standards is a blueprint for a good style.

You'll find lots of good examples and excellent coders here in WPSE. A nice starting point: questions/tagged/plugin-development.

Highlighting:

• Objective Best Practices for Plugin Development?
• framework for plugin/theme options panel?
• What Plugins Demonstrate Great WP Plugin Development?

Nowadays, I use Plugin Class Demo from @toscho as base for many plugins.

Right now, @Pippin is doing a series Introduction to WordPress Plugin Development 101 that may be of interest.

[ update, thanks to @Wyck contribution, a list of helper-plugins/boilerplates/frameworks ]

Plugin scbFramework, by @scribu:

A set of useful classes for faster plugin development.
This is a plugin toolkit that helps developers write plugins faster. It consists of several classes which handle common tasks, such as generating settings pages, creating database tables and more.

WordPress-Gear > PHP Boilerplate > Plugin stuff

1. Plugin boilerplate by @tommcfarlin
2. Object Oriented Plugin Template
3. Settings framework by @gilbitron
4. scbFramework - Classes for plugin dev
5. WordPress Settings API - by @tareq_cse
6. WP MVC - MVC framework to create plugins

Answer 2

Two more newer frameworks are:

• http://getherbert.com/
• http://framework.themosis.com/

Both share similarities with Laravel.

Answer 3

You can also generate your personalized version of Tom's Plugin boilerplate here.

Answer 4

I believe Sunrise (http://gndev.info/sunrise/) is the kind of thing you're asking for. It's relatively new, and I haven't used it myself, so I offer no recommendations. However, it looks quite promising. It's available on WordPress plugin directory as a plugin: http://wordpress.org/plugins/sunrise/.

Answer 5

You can check this one is very simple and basic base structure. https://github.com/softmixt/simple-wordpress-plugin-framework