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Ticket #43546: EXPORT.3.md

File EXPORT.3.md, 7.4 KB (added by allendav, 8 years ago)
Fixed a few typos in EXPORT.md

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1	# How to Connect Your Plugin to Core's New Personal Data Exporter
2
3	## Background
4
5	In WordPress 4.9.x, new tools were added to make compliance easier with laws
6	like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR for
7	short. Among the tools added is a Personal Data Export tool which supports
8	exporting all the personal data for a given user in a ZIP file.
9
10	In addition to the personal data stored in things like WordPress comments,
11	plugins can also hook into the exporter feature to export the personal
12	data they collect, whether it be in something like postmeta or even an
13	entirely new Custom Post Type (CPT).
14
15	## How It Works
16
17	The "key" for all the exports is the user's email address - this was chosen
18	because it supports exporting personal data for both full-fledged registered
19	users and also unregistered users (e.g. like a logged out commenter).
20
21	However, since assembling a personal data export could be an intensive
22	process and will likely contain sensitive data, we don't want to just
23	generate it and email it to the requestor without confirming the request, so
24	the admin-facing UX starts all requests by having the admin enter the username
25	or email address making the request and then sends then a link to click
26	to confirm their request.
27
28	A list of requests and whether they have been confirmed is available to
29	the administrator in the same user interface. Once a request has been
30	confirmed, the admin can generate and download or directly email the
31	personal data export ZIP file for the user.
32
33	Inside the ZIP file the user receives, they will find a "mini website"
34	with an index HTML page containing their personal data organized in
35	groups (e.g. a group for comments, etc. )
36
37	## Design Internals
38
39	Whether the admin downloads the personal data export ZIP file or sends
40	it directly to the requestor, the way the personal data export is
41	assembled is identical - and relies on hooking "exporter" callbacks to
42	do the dirty work of collecting all the data for the export.
43
44	When the admin clicks on the download or email link, an AJAX loop begins
45	that iterates over all the exporters registered in the system, one at a time.
46	In addition to exporters built into core, plugins can register their own
47	exporter callbacks.
48
49	The exporter callback interface is designed to be as simple as possible.
50	A exporter callback receives the email address we are working with,
51	and a page parameter as well. The page parameter (which starts at 1) is
52	used to avoid plugins potentially causing timeouts by attempting to export
53	all the personal data they've collected at once.
54
55	The exporter callback replies with whatever data it has for that
56	email address and page and whether it is done or not. If a exporter
57	callback reports that it is not done, it will be called again (in a
58	separate request) with the page parameter incremented by 1.
59
60	Exporter callbacks are expected to return an array of items for the
61	export. Each item contains an a group identifier for the group of which
62	the item is a part (e.g. comments, posts, orders, etc.), an optional group
63	label (translated), an item identifier (e.g. comment-133) and then an array of
64	name, value pairs containing the data to be exported for that item.
65
66	It is noteworthy that the value could be a media path, in which case the
67	media file will be added to the exported ZIP file with a link in the
68	"mini website" "index" HTML document to it.
69
70	When all the exporters have been called to completion, core first assembles
71	an "index" HTML document that serves as the heart of the export report.
72	First, it walks the aggregate data and finds all the groups that core
73	and plugins have identified.
74
75	Then, for each group, it walks the data and finds all the items, using
76	their item identifier to collect all the data for a given
77	item (e.g. comment-133) from all the exporters into a single entry for the
78	report. That way, core and plugins can all contribute data for the same
79	item (e.g. a plugin may add location information to comments) and in the
80	final export, all the data for a given item (e.g. comment 133) will be
81	presented together.
82
83	All of this is rendered into the HTML document and then the HTML document
84	is zipped with any media attachments before being returned to the
85	admin or emailed to the user. Exports are cached on the server for 1 day and
86	then deleted.
87
88	## What to Do
89
90	A plugin can register one or more exporters, but most plugins will only
91	need one. Let's work from the example given above where a plugin adds
92	location data for the commenter to comments.
93
94	First, let's assume the plugin has used `add_comment_meta` to add location
95	data using `meta_key`s of `latitude` and `longitude`
96
97	The first thing the plugin needs to do is to create an exporter function
98	that accepts an email address and a page, e.g.:
99
100	```
101	function my_plugin_exporter( $email_address, $page = 1 ) {
102	$number = 500; // Limit us to avoid timing out
103	$page = (int) $page;
104
105	$export_items = array();
106
107	$comments = get_comments(
108	array(
109	'author_email' => $email_address,
110	'number' => $number,
111	'paged' => $page,
112	'order_by' => 'comment_ID',
113	'order' => 'ASC',
114	)
115	);
116
117	foreach ( (array) $comments as $comment ) {
118	$latitude = get_comment_meta( $comment->comment_ID, 'latitude', true );
119	$longitude = get_comment_meta( $comment->comment_ID, 'longitude', true );
120
121	// Only add location data to the export if it is not empty
122	if ( ! empty( $latitude ) ) {
123	// Most item IDs should look like postType-postID
124	// If you don't have a post, comment or other ID to work with,
125	// use a unique value to avoid having this item's export
126	// combined in the final report with other items of the same id
127	$item_id = "comment-{$comment->comment_ID}";
128
129	// Core group IDs include 'comments', 'posts', etc.
130	// But you can add your own group IDs as needed
131	$group_id = 'comments';
132
133	// Optional group label. Core provides these for core groups.
134	// If you define your own group, the first exporter to
135	// include a label will be used as the group label in the
136	// final exported report
137	$group_label = __( 'Comments' );
138
139	// Plugins can add as many items in the item data array as they want
140	$data = array(
141	array(
142	'name' => __( 'Commenter Latitude' ),
143	'value' => $latitude
144	),
145	array(
146	'name' => __( 'Commenter Longitude' ),
147	'value' => $longitude
148	)
149	);
150
151	$export_items[] = array(
152	'group_id' => $group_id,
153	'group_label' => $group_label,
154	'item_id' => $item_id,
155	'data' => $data,
156	);
157	}
158	}
159
160	// Tell core if we have more comments to work on still
161	$done = count( $comments ) < $number;
162
163	return array(
164	'data' => $export_items,
165	'done' => $done,
166	);
167	}
168	```
169
170	The next thing the plugin needs to do is to register the callback by
171	filtering the exporter array using the `wp_privacy_personal_data_exporters`
172	filter.
173
174	When registering you provide a friendly name for the export (to aid in
175	debugging - this friendly name is not shown to anyone at this time)
176	and the callback, e.g.
177
178	```
179	function register_my_plugin_exporter( $exporters ) {
180	$exporters[] = array(
181	'exporter_friendly_name' => __( 'Comment Location Plugin' ),
182	'callback' => 'my_plugin_exporter',
183	);
184	return $exporters;
185	}
186
187	add_filter(
188	'wp_privacy_personal_data_exporters',
189	'register_my_plugin_exporter',
190	10
191	);
192	```
193
194	And that's all there is to it! Your plugin will now provide data
195	for the export!

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