Introduce WP_Term class

[scribu]

In the current taxonomy API, you end up having to pass the taxonomy name over and over again.

I propose we have a WP_Term class to avoid that.

Example

Current:

get_term_link( get_term_by( 'name', 'Term Name', 'taxname' ), 'taxname' )

Proposed:

get_term_by( 'name', 'Term Name', 'taxname' )->get_link()

get_term_by() would return a WP_Term instance instead of a stdClass instance.

Besides get_link(), the WP_Term class could also have an update() method that would replace (or complement) wp_update_term().

Inspired by #14156.

Chaining functions would have to wait until PHP 5.

Sure, but this enhancement is not dependant on chaining. You could still do this:

$term = get_term_by( 'name', 'Term Name', 'taxname' );
echo $term->get_link();

which would still be better than:

$term = get_term_by( 'name', 'Term Name', 'taxname' );
echo get_term_link( $term, 'taxname' );

Found out that this is pretty easy to implement as a plugin. See wp-term.php

Having a WP_Term object is a great idea.

Instead of an update method that gets an array of arguments, why not have it save the current object's properties to the database?

$term->set_description('my new description');
$term->update(); // now the new description is saved to the database

As suggested above, it would also be nice to have getters and possibly setters for the other salient properties in addition to "link."

Yeah, another one would be WP_Term::get_children().

implemented as a plugin: get_link(), get_children()

Personally, I'm not a big fan of this type of encapsulation working its way into WordPress.

I want to ensure that everything is simple to use and I'm not sure lots of objects like this is the way to go.

Replying to westi:

Personally, I'm not a big fan of this type of encapsulation working its way into WordPress.

I want to ensure that everything is simple to use and I'm not sure lots of objects like this is the way to go.

Could you elaborate your objections? Terms already are objects, so this would extend existing functionality, not diminish it or require people to use a new API.

extra check for get_terms()