CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pluginswordpress
Daniel Setréus
Daniel Setréus

Reputation: 562

Wordpress: Save custom plugin options from backend

I'm developing a plugin that will pull data from a third party API. The user user inputs a number of options in a normal settings form for the plugin (used Reduz Framework - that uses WP Settings API).

The user provided options will then be used to generate a request to the third party API.

Now to my problem / question: How can I store the data that's returned from that API? Is there a built in way to do this in Wordpress - or will I have to install a database table of my own? Seems to be a bit overkill... Is there any way to "hack" in to the Settings API and set custom settings without having to display them in a form on front end?

Thank you - and happy holidays to everyone!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1757

Answers (1)

webaware
webaware

Reputation: 2841

It sounds like what you want to do is actually just store the data from the remote API request, rather than "options". If you don't want to create a table for them, I can think of three simple approaches.

Transients API

Save the data returned from the API as transients, i.e. temporary cached data. This is generally good for data that's going to expire anyway and thus will need to be refreshed. Set an expiry time! Even if you want to hang onto the data "for ever", set an expiry time or the data will be autoloaded on every page load and thus consume memory even if you don't need them. You can then easily retrieve them with get_transient; if expired, you'll get false and that is your trigger to make your API call again.

NB: on hosts with memcached or other object caches, there's a good chance that your transients will be pushed out of the object cache sooner than you intend, thus forcing your plugin to retrieve the data again from the API. Transients really are about caching, not "data storage" per se.

Options

Save your data as custom options using add_option -- and specify autoload="no" so that they don't fill up script memory when they aren't needed! Beware the update_option will add the data with autoload="yes" if it doesn't already exist, so I recommend you delete and then add rather than update. You can then retrieve your data easily.

Custom Post Type

You can easily store your data in the wp_posts table by registering a custom post type, and then you can use wp_insert to save them and the usual WordPress post queries to retrieve them. Great for long-term data that you want to hang onto. You can make use of the post_title, post_content, post_excerpt and other standard post fields to store some of your data, and if you need more, you can add post meta fields.

Upvotes: 1

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