WC_Data Family Trees
Overview
When digging in on a specific project, it’s helpful to have a clear idea of the existing class structure before looking for avenues of customization. Make a note of the complexity of each class structure. This will play a key role in our decision on how to customize a given family’s behavior In this topic we’ll discuss each of the WC_Data family trees, including:
- Product classes
- Order & Order Item classes
- Coupon classes
- Payment Token classes
- Customer classes
- Customer Download & Download Log classes
- Shipping Zone Classes
- Webhook classes
Key Patterns to Observe
- Many Classes implement a legacy class as a direct descendant of WC_Data. These classes hold backward compatible functionality However, their methods are deprecated and will throw a Notice.
- Several descendants of WC_Data implement the ArrayAccess interface, allowing developers to interact with the object’s properties using both object notation and array notation
- The WC_Data families range from very complex (e.g. Products) to very simple (e.g. Coupons), however, they all share the common features of:
- They are all extendable*
- They all interact with data stores, which can be customized*
*The techniques and limitations of these customizations are discussed in the next topics
Product Classes
Order Classes
Order Item Classes
Coupon Classes
Payment Token Classes
Customer Classes
Customer Download & Download Log classes
Shipping Zone Classes
Webhook classes
Conclusion
Now that you can see where there’s simplicity in the system, and where it’s complex. Complex families are typically loaded through factories, which can actually simplify the customization process. While simple families are usually directly loaded, causing us to default to filter and action hooks for customization
Next, we get into some of the good stuff: the filter and action hooks that are available to developers to make low-level adjustments throughout the behavior of the WC_Data classes.
But first, let’s review a little
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