I’m working on a website project using WordPress that requires a few custom plugins. I want to keep the plugins modular, but a few of them require similar functionality. So, I find myself with conflicting goals:
- Make each plugin self-contained and modular
- Don’t repeat code
For example, I have a need in two different plugins to output <select> elements based on a list of terms and some arguments. I wrote a function to accomplish this, but should I duplicate the function in both plugins? That seems like a maintenance nightmare, but if I don’t, one plugin will depend on the other in a pretty arbitrary way. Is there some clever solution to this that I’m missing?
Consider the duplicate code. In particular, consider the number of functions and their length. If both plugins share only a couple formatting methods, it’s not such a big deal to duplicate that code in order to keep the plugins self-contained.
If the duplicate code is getting pretty hefty, start thinking about doing one of the following:
Merge the plugins into a single plugin. Only do this if the two plugins fit into the same problem space. Take a good hard look at the plugins. There’s a chance that what made them seem separate before was illusory and the fundamental behaviors are closely related.
Extract the duplicate code into a third plugin which is a dependency of each of the plugins that share the code. Only do this if the duplicate code is related and make sense as a plugin.