Updates for a private plugin?

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If I write a private plugin, is there any way to use the WordPress auto-update mechanism to update it?

I want to encapsulate the functionality, but it’s specific to my own 5 or so blogs, so it’s not a good candidate for the public plugins resource. But I love the easy-updating mechanism.

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Is there a way to do this?

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9 comments

  1. Since WordPress v5.8, it is a lot simpler to create yourself a basic version of custom plugin update functionality.

    Step 1

    Create JSON file on your server. It will contain info about latest version number of your plugin(s) and link to ZIP file(s) for WordPress to automatically download it when update is triggered.

    Example location: https://my-domain.com/custom-plugins/plugins-info.json

    Example content:

    {
    "my-plugin/my-plugin.php":{
        "version":"1.1",
        "package":"https://my-domain.com/custom-plugins/my-plugin.zip"
    }
}

    You can add multiple plugins info to that JSON. Just ensure that plugin key for each is in directory_name/file_name.php format.

    Of course, only when plugin version in JSON is larger than version you have installed, WordPress will show you that new version is available.

    For full list of plugin(s) data you can set in JSON file, check $update parameter here

    Step 2

    Add “Update URI” to plugin’s main file (comment section). It should link to your custom JSON file you created in step 1.

    <?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: My plugin
 * Version:     1.0
 * Update URI:  https://my-domain.com/custom-plugins/plugins-info.json
 * 
 */

    Step 3

    Add this code to custom plugin’s main file (or to functions.php)

    IMPORTANT: Change “my-domain.com” inside add_filter function to actual domain you are using for JSON file.

    if( ! function_exists( 'my_plugin_check_for_updates' ) ){
    
    function my_plugin_check_for_updates( $update, $plugin_data, $plugin_file ){
        
        static $response = false;
        
        if( empty( $plugin_data['UpdateURI'] ) || ! empty( $update ) )
            return $update;
        
        if( $response === false )
            $response = wp_remote_get( $plugin_data['UpdateURI'] );
        
        if( empty( $response['body'] ) )
            return $update;
        
        $custom_plugins_data = json_decode( $response['body'], true );
        
        if( ! empty( $custom_plugins_data[ $plugin_file ] ) )
            return $custom_plugins_data[ $plugin_file ];
        else
            return $update;
        
    }
    
    add_filter('update_plugins_my-domain.com', 'my_plugin_check_for_updates', 10, 3);
    
}

  2. Looks like the applicable code is in wp-includes/update.php, wp_update_plugins():

    $to_send = (object) compact('plugins', 'active');

$options = array(
    'timeout' => ( ( defined('DOING_CRON') && DOING_CRON ) ? 30 : 3), 
    'body' => array( 'plugins' => serialize( $to_send ) ),
    'user-agent' => 'WordPress/' . $wp_version . '; ' . get_bloginfo( 'url' )
);  

$raw_response = wp_remote_post('http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/update-check/1.0/', $options);

    It specifically checks api.wordpress.org. Technically speaking it would be possible to pass a key inside $to_send to delegate the check, but to my knowledge that is not a supported feature.

    If you hook into set_site_transient_update_plugins you could add your own package details into this variable. It looks like those values will be trusted when you run the plugin updater. See wp-admin/update.php and wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php. Given the code in these two functions, I think it would be possible to inject your own update server, you just need to look at how the package details are formatted and match that.

  3. This plugin does it for you:

    Automatic Updates For Private And Commercial Plugins

    Since time immemorial, only plugins hosted in the official WordPress.org plugin directory have supported automatic updates. Now, I’ve written a PHP library that you can use to add automatic update capabilities to any plugin. Public, private and commercial plugins alike – all can now enjoy the benefits of automatic update notifications and one-click upgrades.

    GitHub repository

  5. I’m looking into the same thing. A couple of links that I’ve found that might be helpful:

    The first is some info and pointers to the upgrades API. The second is a code snippet showing how to actually request info from the API.

    get_api_data()

    <?php
/*
Retrieve items from the plugin API
*/
function get_api_data($per_page, $page)
{
    $fields = array(
        'downloaded' => true,
        'author' => false,
        'author_profile' => false,
        'contributors' => false,
        'requires' => true,
        'tested' => false,
        'compatibility' => false,
        'homepage' => false,
        'description' => false,
        'last_updated' => true,
        'added' => true
    );
    $body = (object) array('browse' => 'new', 'page' => $page, 'per_page' => $per_page, 'fields' => $fields);
    $post_data = array('action' => 'query_plugins', 'request' => serialize($body));
 
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.0/');
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $return = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
 
    return unserialize($return);
}

  6. You may want to check out the WordPress Development Kit plugin. I recently migrated my proprietary update system to this plugin. The plugin now serves as the back-end processor for my premium plugin updates.

    This is similar in setup to the solution provided by agileapricot above. It will install as a standard plugin on a WordPress site. You host your premium .zip files and the plugins.json in production or prerelease directories on your server (specified in the settings for the plugin).

    The plugin also allows you to list plugin versions and can even provide a download for the files on public, password-protected, or subscription-protected pages. You can see an example of the on-page version list here.

    I have been using the plugin for months to publish the change log for my premium add-ons, the current versions list, and download lists for my Premier Subscription holders. Now, with version 0.7.01, it is working as the query destination for inline WordPress updates.

    Hope some of you find it useful.