Create short code/ block for searching for plugins

[bobbingwide]

Using top 10 logic implement a simple search for the top 10 plugins that match a set of keywords but don’t match a set of other keywords.

Requirements

• Display results as a list or table.
• Support 0 or more matching strings.
• Support 0 or more exclusion strings.
• Support a number to display.
• Pagination not required?
• Display fields as in example

[top10 2]

Posn	Plugin	Downloads	Tested	Requires	Last Update
1	WordPress SEO	2xxxxxxxx	5.2	5.0	dd Mon ccyy
2	Akismet	1xxxxxxxx	5.2	5.0	ddMon ccyy

The Plugin links to the wordpress.org entry, by slug.

[top10 include=gutenberg,block exclude=spam,IP,blocker]

WIBNI: there was an option to display the plugin’s details on a show more / hover.

Proposed solution

• Uses the wporg_plugins.csv as source data
• If number specified then that’s the limit
• If includes are specified then the plugin has to be matched
• If excludes are specified then the plugin should not match
• Exclusions could be displayed in a subsequent list
• Provide input fields for selection

Use cases

• Automatically display the top 10 / 12 plugins for wp-top-10-plugins.com
• Find plugins that may contain Gutenberg blocks based on plugin name
• Find plugins associated with a particular word. E.g. SEO or Jetpack

Limitations

• Will not search keywords. WordPress REST API does not deliver these
• Will not be a live extract.

[bobbingwide]

Current solution I’ve prototyped displays different columns; Active Installs and Rating instead of Requires and Last update. Need to decide what goes in wporg_downloads.csv

[bobbingwide]

Having tried this routine out on the latest list of plugins I've got some additional requirements.

1. Don't list plugins which haven't been updated since WordPress 5.0 went live.

This should eliminate plugins such as wysiwyg-widgets from appearing in a list of plugins for the WordPress block editor

[bobbingwide]

Version 1.0.0-alpha-20191107 has a couple of issues:

1. It fails when oik-bwtrace is inactive
2. If you forget to name the parameters it just shows the most popular plugin.
3. It’s not possible to implement a must match exactly search E.g. for gtrans it finds gtranslate and for nextgen-Gallery It finds all the extensions
4. Active installs value of 1000000 displays as a phone number on iPad

Proposed solutions

1. Determine which files are needed
2. Check if limit is not numeric. If it’s not, treat it as matches - see below
3. Add a matches parameter for exact matches

[bobbingwide]

I’ve developed fixes for the first 3 of the above problems and used them to create posts for the following:

1. Top 12
2. Top 30
3. Where are they now? Plugins that used to be in the top 12 in 2012
4. Oik-plugins in wordpress.org
5. Gutenberg/block plugins - should also show the exclusions
6. Debug / development plugins - top 200

For the Gutenberg list I also want to able to compare by date. Any plugin with a last update before WordPress 5.0 could be excluded on the basis that it couldn’t possibly have working blocks.

[bobbingwide]

The code is now live on https://top-10-wp-plugins.com so I'm going to close this even though not everything is PHPUnit tested yet.