CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpfunction
thommylue
thommylue

Reputation: 170

Wordpress functions without include

I was looking in my wordpress files and code. There is a file called functions.php. But how it is possible that in every file there are called functions without including the functions.php ?

I learned in school that you have to include files when you want to use something from another page.

I can't find something useful on the Internet. Can somebody explain this to me?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 341

Answers (2)

Cameron Hurd
Cameron Hurd

Reputation: 5031

Take a look at @rdlowrey's answer to How Wordpress Generates HTML for Blog Posts

What Wordpress does -- and indeed many of the popular MVC frameworks -- is route ALL traffic to A Front Controller [wiki] script using an apache .htaccess file.

So when you are accessing any page served by a WP installation, certain functions become available to you, since it's all passing through the same "start point".

To start following the trail, open up index.php in the root directory, and see this:

/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/wp-blog-header.php' );

From there, take a look at wp-blog-header.php. It's loading wp-load.php. If there's no wp-config.php, it prompts you to install. If you do have it in your directory, notice it requires wp-settings.php.

In the settings file, you'll see explicitly where your theme's functions.php file gets added into the mix around line 318 (of WP 3.8.1 at least)

// Load the functions for the active theme, for both parent and child theme if applicable.
if ( ! defined( 'WP_INSTALLING' ) || 'wp-activate.php' === $pagenow ) {
    if ( TEMPLATEPATH !== STYLESHEETPATH && file_exists( STYLESHEETPATH . '/functions.php' ) )
        include( STYLESHEETPATH . '/functions.php' );
    if ( file_exists( TEMPLATEPATH . '/functions.php' ) )
        include( TEMPLATEPATH . '/functions.php' );
}

Upvotes: 1

versvs
versvs

Reputation: 643

The functions.php file of the active theme is loaded everytime your wordpress site serves a page.

So any function you add there will be loaded and available to use in your template files.

Say your functions.php file looks like this:

<?php
function my_example() {
    echo "<h1>My example</h1>";
}

Then, in your header.php you can call that function like this:

<html>
<head></head>
<body>
    <?php my_example(); ?>
</body>
</html>

You don't need to specifically include (nor include_once) the functions.php file in order to use your just declared function.

Upvotes: 0

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