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I spent a while working on how I wanted to handle plugin activation for Phorum over this weekend.  I investigated using the existing WordPress tables to store the forum information but, in the end, opted to create my own custom ones for one specific reason:  it’ll be easier to clean up after myself if someone uninstalls the plugin if my information isn’t strewn throughout the normal blog tables.

That decision made, I had to figure out the best way to handle the CREATE TABLE queries that would be required of the system when the plugin is activated (and updated).  I’ve never been a fan of the long column of SQL statements that some plugins use when creating their own tables.  I’m big stickler for code that looks pretty and is functional, so I wanted a way to store the CREATE TABLE queries in a secure fashion while also keeping them in a separate file from the main Phorum code.

To that end, I created a folder and in that folder I put the SQL statements.  Then, if the tables needed to be changed, I can use file_get_contents() to read in the queries and then use the WordPress dbDelta() function to actually execute them.  This worked very well:

[cc lang='php' escaped="true" tab_size='3']

$prefix = $wpdb->prefix . self::prefix;
$dir = WP_PLUGIN_DIR . “/phorum/sql”;
$files = new DirectoryIterator($dir);
foreach($files as $file) if(substr($file, -7, 7) == “sql.php”)  {
$table = $prefix . basename($file, “.sql.php”);
$query = file_get_contents(“$dir/$file”);
$query = preg_replace(“/<\?php | \?>/”, “”, $query);
$sql  .= sprintf($query, $table, DB_CHARSET);
}
dbDelta($sql);

[/cc]

There’s an interesting tidbit on line 7 above. I had to add the PHP tags around my statements to avoid them being printed on-screen if someone actually browsed to the files.  If they were simply text, then browsers would show the table information to anyone who happened by.  This way, the result is a blank screen.  It’s not yet the most elegant solution but it works for my purposes of the moment but I’ll probably keep trying to think of a better solution until one presents itself.