WordPress Development – Hooks
Hooks are used to modify or interact with code at a certain predefined point. Hooks are the basis for how WordPress themes and plugins interact with the WordPress core and they are also used by the core itself. There are already many hooks provided by WordPress that can be used, but it’s also possible to create your own hook, so other developers can extend and modify your theme or plugin. There are two types of hooks, Actions and Filters. To use Actions and Filters, you need to write a custom “callback” function, and then register it with a WordPress hook for a specific Action or Filter.
Actions
Actions allow you to add data or change the way WordPress works. Actions are executed at a specific point in the execution of WordPress Core, plugins and themes. The Actions callback functions can do tasks such as inserting a value into the database. The functions do not return anything to the action hook.
Filters
Filters are meant to modify data during the execution of WordPress Core, Plugins and Themes. A variable is accepted by the callback function, changed and returned again. Filters work in isolation and therefore have no side effects, such as affecting global variables and outputs. Unlike actions, filters expect something to be returned to them.
Actions vs. Filters
The biggest difference between actions and filters is that actions do something with the information they receive, but do not return anything. Filters, on the other hand, return something after you have processed the information. Or in other words: An action interrupts the flow of code to do something, and then returns to the normal flow without modifying anything. A filter is used to modify something in a specific way so that the modification is then used by code later on.
Conclusion
We hope this WordPress Development – Hooks post was helpful and you now know what hooks are and why they are helpful. You can find more articles here:
Read another WordPress post : ‘Top 50 Woocommerce Code Hooks and Filters‘
For more excellent information on this topic, visit developer.wordpress.org
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