WPHooks: WordPress-style Hooks for Python

WPHooks is a lightweight Python library that brings the powerful Event-Driven Architecture of WordPress—Actions and Filters—to your Python projects. It allows you to create extensible, modular, and plugin-friendly applications with ease.

Table of Contents

• Why WPHooks?
• Types of Hooks
  • Actions
  • Filters
• Installation
• Development & Testing

Why WPHooks?

WordPress's hook system is a proven pattern for building flexible software. It allows developers to "hook" into specific points of the application execution to modify data or add custom functionality without altering the core codebase. wphooks implements this exact behavior in Python.

Perfect for Legacy Projects

Refactoring legacy code ("spaghetti code") is often risky and difficult. wphooks offers a strategic way to modernize these projects:

1. Open/Closed Principle: You can extend the functionality of a legacy function without modifying its internal logic.
2. Safe Injection: Instead of rewriting a massive function to add a new feature, you can simply trigger an action or apply a filter at the key point.
3. Decoupling: New features implementation stays in separate files/modules, keeping the old codebase clean and untouched.

Example Scenario: Imagine a 1000-line function process_order() that is critical to your business. You need to add a "Send Slack Notification" feature. Instead of risking a bug by editing process_order(), you just add do_action('order_processed', order_id) at the end. Your new Slack logic lives in a completely new file, hooked to order_processed.

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Types of Hooks

There are two main types of hooks available in this library:

Actions

Actions are "do something" events that allow you to execute custom code at specific points in your execution flow. They trigger when specific events occur during your script's execution (e.g., "User registered", "Page loaded"). They do not return a value.

Basic Example

from wphooks import add_action, do_action


# 1. Define your custom function
def send_welcome_email(user_id):
    print(f"Sending welcome email to user {user_id}...")


# 2. Hook your function to an action name
add_action('user_registered', send_welcome_email)

# 3. Trigger the action somewhere in your code
# This will execute all functions hooked to 'user_registered'
do_action('user_registered', 123)
# Output: Sending welcome email to user 123...

See more Action examples and detailed usage

Filters

Filters are used to "modify something". They accept a data value, modify it, and return it (e.g., "Format title", " Calculate total price"). They must always return a value.

Basic Example

from wphooks import add_filter, apply_filters


# 1. Define your filter function
# It receives a value (and optional args), and MUST return a value
def make_title_uppercase(title):
    return title.upper()


# 2. Hook your function to a filter name
add_filter('the_title', make_title_uppercase)

# 3. Apply the filter to your data
title = "hello world"
filtered_title = apply_filters('the_title', title)

print(filtered_title)
# Output: HELLO WORLD

See more Filter examples and detailed usage

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Installation

You can install wphooks easily using pip:

pip install wphooks

Or install it directly from the source:

git clone https://github.com/manuelcanga/wphooks.git
cd wphooks
pip install .

Then, you can import it in your project:

from wphooks import add_action, do_action
from wphooks import add_filter, apply_filters

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Development & Testing

To run the unit tests for this project, you can use the built-in unittest module.

Run the following command from the root of the project:

python3 -m unittest discover tests

This will automatically discover and run all tests located in the tests/ directory.