Child Plugins

A Wonderful Relations child plugin is a regular WordPress plugin that depends on the Wonderful Relations mother plugin and extends it with custom Projects, Entities, Forms, DataTables, ActionTypes, Tasks, Workers and so on. The mother plugin provides a small base class so every child gets the same lifecycle — activation, deactivation, update-center plumbing, admin menu, dependency checks — for free.

The four building blocks

Concept	Purpose	Page
AbstractChildPlugin	Base class your provider extends. Wires WR lifecycle hooks, activation/deactivation, update notices.	AbstractChildPlugin
ChildPluginContext	Immutable builder that declares slug, version, modules bootstrap, menu, required plugins, cron, ….	ChildPluginContext
Kernel	Default loader. Boots Resources, Modules, Menu, Update Center.	Kernel
Lifecycle hooks	Plugin-level signals you can listen to.	Lifecycle Hooks

Minimal example

The plugin’s main file your-plugin.php becomes:

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: Your WR Child Plugin
 * Version:     1.0.0
 * Text Domain: your-plugin
 */
 
require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
 
new \TS\YourPlugin\Plugin( __FILE__ );

And the provider class src/Plugin.php:

namespace TS\YourPlugin;
 
use TS\WonderfulRelations\System\ChildPlugin\AbstractChildPlugin;
use TS\WonderfulRelations\System\ChildPlugin\ChildPluginContext;
 
final class Plugin extends AbstractChildPlugin {
 
    public function __construct( private readonly string $main_file ) {
        parent::__construct();
    }
 
    protected static function make_context(): ChildPluginContext {
        return ChildPluginContext::create(
            slug:       'your-plugin',
            version:    '1.0.0',
            textdomain: 'your-plugin',
            title:      'Your WR Child Plugin',
            main_file:  __FILE__   // resolved by the bootstrap above
        )
            ->with_modules_bootstrap( \TS\YourPlugin\Modules\Init::class )
            ->with_dashboard_shortcode( 'your_plugin_dashboard' )
            ->with_menu_icon( 'dashicons-database' );
    }
}

Everything else — registering activation hooks, listening for wonderful_relations_plugin_loaded, gating modules behind a pending DB update, registering the admin menu — is derived from the context. See Minimal Example for the full walkthrough.

What you get for free

Once the provider is wired up, Wonderful Relations:

• Registers an activation_hook that bails with a friendly message if the mother plugin (or any required plugin) is missing.
• Listens for wonderful_relations_plugin_loaded so your modules boot after WR is fully initialized.
• Gates module loading while a DB update is pending and shows a red admin banner with a link to the Update Center.
• Registers your admin menu with the configured icon and your dashboard shortcode as the entry page.
• Registers cron schedules from with_cron_schedules() on init.
• Picks up src/Database/Config/config.json if present and wires the Update Center for it.

Folder layout convention

your-plugin/
├── your-plugin.php              # main file, calls new Plugin(__FILE__)
├── composer.json
├── src/
│   ├── Plugin.php               # provider extends AbstractChildPlugin
│   ├── Modules/
│   │   ├── Init.php             # bootstraps your ActionTypes / Tasks / …
│   │   ├── Person/
│   │   │   ├── Actions/
│   │   │   ├── Tasks/
│   │   │   └── …
│   │   └── …
│   └── Database/
│       └── Config/
│           └── config.json      # optional: declarative migration plan
├── languages/
└── vendor/

This layout matches the wonderful-relations-plugin-template repo — copy that template if you want a working starting point.