Exclude repo file when updating my plugin

[nebestudio]

Hello,

is there a way when updating a plugin with the repo content on github to exclude one settings file? It should be not synchronised, neither deleted.

When having this settings file (settings.php) in my plugin and update the plugin, it gets deleted every time, although I have .gitattributes file in my github repo with this content "settings.php export-ignore".

Thanks in advance!

[YahnisElsts]

It's been a while since I've looked at the relevant part of WordPress core, but I think that the WP plugin updater deletes the entire directory of the old version before installing a new version. So you can't preserve a file in the plugin directory even if the update doesn't include a new version of that file. It will get deleted anyway.

If you really have to keep a specific file unchanged, you might have to write a custom plugin update installer. PUC doesn't handle that part, it just hands the update to WordPress core.

[MarJC5]

Hi @nebestudio & @YahnisElsts,

I have a custom theme with a folder that I wanted to keep even after updates. To achieve this, I used the WordPress update hooks to preserve the folder. Here’s the code in case you need to do the same.

For scenarios where you need to preserve a specific folder (or file) during theme updates, you can use the following approach. It leverages the WordPress hooks upgrader_pre_install and upgrader_post_install to temporarily move the folder out of the theme directory before the update and restore it afterward.

Here’s a small class, PUCUpdateKeeper, that demonstrates how to achieve this:

<?php

class PUCUpdateKeeper {
    private $theme_slug;
    private $folder_to_preserve;
    private $temp_location;

    public function __construct($theme_slug, $folder_to_preserve) {
        $this->theme_slug = $theme_slug;
        $this->folder_to_preserve = get_theme_root() . '/' . $theme_slug . '/' . $folder_to_preserve;
        $this->temp_location = WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/temp-folder-to-preserve';

        add_filter('upgrader_pre_install', [$this, 'preserveFolderBeforeUpdate'], 10, 2);
        add_filter('upgrader_post_install', [$this, 'restoreFolderAfterUpdate'], 10, 3);
    }

    public function preserveFolderBeforeUpdate($response, $hook_extra) {
        if (isset($hook_extra['theme']) && $hook_extra['theme'] === $this->theme_slug) {
            if (file_exists($this->folder_to_preserve)) {
                if (!file_exists($this->temp_location)) {
                    mkdir($this->temp_location, 0755, true);
                }
                $this->recurseCopy($this->folder_to_preserve, $this->temp_location);
            }
        }
        return $response;
    }

    public function restoreFolderAfterUpdate($response, $hook_extra, $result) {
        if (isset($hook_extra['theme']) && $hook_extra['theme'] === $this->theme_slug) {
            if (file_exists($this->temp_location)) {
                $this->recurseCopy($this->temp_location, $this->folder_to_preserve);
                $this->deleteFolder($this->temp_location);
            }
        }
        return $response;
    }

    private function recurseCopy($src, $dst) {
        $dir = opendir($src);
        @mkdir($dst);
        while (($file = readdir($dir)) !== false) {
            if ($file !== '.' && $file !== '..') {
                if (is_dir($src . '/' . $file)) {
                    $this->recurseCopy($src . '/' . $file, $dst . '/' . $file);
                } else {
                    copy($src . '/' . $file, $dst . '/' . $file);
                }
            }
        }
        closedir($dir);
    }

    private function deleteFolder($folder) {
        if (!is_dir($folder)) {
            return;
        }
        $files = array_diff(scandir($folder), ['.', '..']);
        foreach ($files as $file) {
            $path = $folder . '/' . $file;
            if (is_dir($path)) {
                $this->deleteFolder($path);
            } else {
                unlink($path);
            }
        }
        rmdir($folder);
    }
}

// Initialize PUCUpdateKeeper for preserving the /<dir> folder.
add_action('after_setup_theme', function () {
    new PUCUpdateKeeper('your-theme-slug', 'folder-to-preserve');
});