README

This lightweight PHP/JS library provides shared basic functionality for free immonex WordPress plugins, i.a.

• consistent initialization
• autoloading of CSS and JS files
• option handling / shared settings pages
• geocoding and domains
• simple templating (incl. Twig 3)
• special string checking and manipulation
• color calculations
• domain and URL handling
• emails
• videos

immonex®

immonex is the PropTech umbrella brand of a versatile portfolio of software solutions for the German-speaking real estate industry.

As a part of this, the immonex WP Plugin Suite includes a wide range of WordPress plugins for the implementation of sophisticated real estate agency websites and portals, which can be flexibly combined depending on the specific project requirements.

Installation

Via Composer

$ composer require immonex/wp-free-plugin-core

Basic Usage

In most cases, a boilerplate template will be used to kickstart plugin development based on this library. Anyway, here comes a basic working example...

The example plugin folder:

myimmonex-example-plugin
├── includes
│   └── class-example-plugin.php
├── languages
├── [vendor]
├── autoload.php
├── composer.json
└── myimmonex-example-plugin.php

With the Composer-based installation, the plugin core library gets added to the require section in composer.json:

    "require": {
        "immonex/wp-free-plugin-core": "^2.13.2"
    },

myimmonex-example-plugin.php is the main plugin file in which the central autoloader file is being included and the main plugin object gets instantiated:

require_once __DIR__ . '/autoload.php';

$myimmonex_example_plugin = new My_Plugin( basename( __FILE__, '.php' ) );
$myimmonex_example_plugin->init();

The main plugin class is located in the file includes/class-example-plugin.php. It is derived from the latest core Base class:

class Example_Plugin extends \immonex\WordPressFreePluginCore\V2_13_2\Base {

	const
		PLUGIN_NAME = 'My immonex Plugin',
		PLUGIN_PREFIX = 'myplugin_',
		PUBLIC_PREFIX = 'myplugin-',
		PLUGIN_VERSION = '1.1.0',
		OPTIONS_LINK_MENU_LOCATION = 'settings';

	...

} // class Example_Plugin

That's it!

Folder Based Versioning

The src folder usually contains two "version branch" folders for the latest development (DEV_[0-9]+) and production release (VX_X_X) versions. It may optionally contain multiple production release folders.

src
├── DEV <────┐ Development Branch (DB), NS: immonex\WordPressFreePluginCore\DEV
├── V1_0_0   │ optional PB
├── V1_1_0   │ optional PB
└── V2_13_2 ─┘ Latest Production Branch (PB), NS: immonex\WordPressFreePluginCore\V2_13_2

The folder names are also part of the related PHP namespaces in the included files, e.g. immonex\WordPressFreePluginCore\V1_0_1.

An arbitrary number and an underscore may be added to the folder name and class namespaces of the DEV folder to ensure uniqueness during development, e.g. immonex\WordPressFreePluginCore\DEV12_3.

Public (production) releases of plugins that use this library always refer to the latest production branch.

Background

Multiple immonex plugins that possibly require different versions of the core library can be active in the same WordPress installation. As these plugins are - more or less - independent components, the Composer dependency management does not work here. Ergo: Each plugin must ensure itself that the used core library files exactly match the required version.

The autoloading chain supplied by this lib avoids incompatibilities that can occur, for example, if an incompatible version has already been loaded by another active immonex plugin.

Development

Requirements

• Git
• npm (Node.js)
• Composer
• PHP_CodeSniffer
• WordPress Coding Standards for PHP_CodeSniffer
• WP-CLI

Setup

Setting up a simple development environment starts by cloning this repository and installing dependencies:

$ cd ~/projects
$ git clone git@github.com:immonex/wp-free-plugin-core.git immonex-wp-free-plugin-core
$ cd immonex-wp-free-plugin-core
$ npm install
$ composer install

⚠️ PHP_CodeSniffer and the related WP sniffs are not part of the default dependencies and should be installed globally).

Git

• Branching strategy: GitHub flow
• Commit messages: Conventional Commits

PHP compatibility

7.4+ (switch to 8.3+ envisaged for future releases)

Coding Standard

The source code formatting corresponds to the WordPress PHP Coding Standards.

The source files can be checked with PHP_CodeSniffer (if, as recommended, installed globally as described here)):

$ phpcs

To fix violations automatically as far as possible:

$ phpcbf

API Documentation

The API documentation based on the sources can be generated with the following command and is available in the apidoc folder afterwards:

$ npm run apidoc

To view it using a local webserver:

$ npm run apidoc:view

If these docs are not needed anymore, the respective folders can be deleted with this command:

$ npm run apidoc:delete

(The folder apidoc is meant to be used locally, it should not a part of any repository.)

Testing

Locally running unit tests (PHPUnit) for plugins usually requires a temporary WordPress installation (see infos on make.wordpress.org). To use the test install script included in this repository, the file .env containing credentials of a local test database has to be created first (see .env.example).

After that, the temporary testing environment can be installed:

$ npm run test:install

Running tests in the tests folder:

$ npm run test

Translations

The core classes of this library do and should only include a few strings that have to be translated. Translations (PO/MO files) that are distributed as part of this library are provided in the languages subfolders of the version branch directories. These folders also contain a current POT file as base for custom translations that can be updated with the following command.

$ npm run pot

Copies of the the german default translation files (MO/de_DE) for the WP locales de_DE_formal, de_AT, de_CH and ch_CH_informal in all dev and production folders can be created with:

$ npm run copy-mo

(Existing translation files will not be overwritten.)

License

GPLv2 or later

Copyright (C) 2014, 2026 inveris OHG / immonex

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.