coding-standard.md

PHP Coding standard

PHP Coding standard for wordpress plugin development

Naming Conventions

Using lowercase letters in variable, action/filter, and function names (never camelcase). Separate words via underscores. Don't abbreviate variable names unnecessarily. Let the code be unambiguous and self-documenting.

    function some_name( $some_variable ) { [...] }

Class names should use capitalized words separated by underscores. Any acronyms should be all upper case.

    class Walker_Category extends Walker { [...] }
    class WP_HTTP { [...] }

Constants should be in all upper-case with underscores separating words:

    define( 'DOING_AJAX', true );

Files should be named descriptively using lowercase letters. Hypens should separate words.

    my-plugin-name.php

class file names should be based on the class name with class- prepended and the underscores in the class name replaced with hyphens, for example WP_Error becomes:

    class-wp-error.php

This file-naming standard is for all current and new files with classes. There is one exception for three files that contain code that code that got ported into BackPress: class.wp-dependencies.php, class.wp-scripts.php, class.wp-styles.php. Those files are prepended with class., a dot after the word class instead of a hyphen.

Files containing template tags in wp-includes should have -template appended to the end of the name so that they are obvious.

    general-template.php