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Object Hooks Remover

Package to remove WordPress hook callbacks that use object methods or closures.

What is this?

WordPress plugin API has a partly incomplete implementation.

add_action and add_filter accepts as "callback" any kind PHP callable:

• named functions
• static object methods
• dynamic object methods
• anonymous functions
• invokable objects

The functions to remove hooks, remove_action and remove_filter, works without issues only with named functions and static object methods (2 of the 5 types of callbacks).

The remaining cases involving object instances remove_action and remove_filter can only be used when having access to the object instance that was used to add hooks, but many times that's not available.

This package provides six functions that can be used to remove hooks that use object methods or closures even without having access to the original object instance.

The package functions are:

• Inpsyde\remove_object_hook()
• Inpsyde\remove_closure_hook()
• Inpsyde\remove_static_method_hook()
• Inpsyde\remove_instance_hook()
• Inpsyde\remove_invokable_hook()
• Inpsyde\remove_all_object_hooks()

You might notice there is no difference between action and filters because, especially in removing, there's absolutely no difference between the two.

The return value of all the functions is the number of callbacks removed.

Inpsyde\remove_object_hook()

This function is used to remove hook callbacks that use object methods. By default, it only targets dynamic methods, but it can be used for static methods passing true to the last parameter.

Usage Example

Inpsyde\remove_closure_hook()

This function targets hook callbacks added using anonymous functions (aka closures).

Closures are the most tricky callbacks to remove because it is hard to distinguish them.

In fact, in PHP, all closures are instances of the same class, Closure, and not having a method name there's very little left to distinguish one closure from another.

This function uses two ways to distinguish closures:

• the object the closure is bound to
• the closure parameters' name and type

Inpsyde\remove_closure_hook signature is:

The second optional param, $targetThis, can be used to identify the $this of the closure to remove.

It can be:

• null, which means "all of them", i.e. the function will not take into account the object bound to closure to see if the closure should be removed or not
• false, the function will only remove static closures or closures with no bound object
• a string containing a class name, the function will only remove closures having a bound object of the given class
• an object instance, the function will only remove closures bound to the given object

The third optional param, $targetArgs is an array that can be used to distinguish closures by their parameters.

For example, a closure like this:

can be targeted just by parameter names, passing an array like:

or by parameter names and types, passing an array like:

The two styles can't be mixed, if the type declaration is used for one param it must be used for all of them. In case any of the parameters have no type declaration, null or "mixed" must be used.

It is also possible to pass null as the third argument (or don't pass anything, which is the same because the param defaults to null), and in that case, closures to be removed will be only distinguished by the bound $this.

When both the second and the third arguments are null, which is the default, all closures added to the given hook are removed (only optionally filtered by priority).

Usage Example

Inpsyde\remove_static_method_hook()

Similarly to remove_object_hook() this function targets only static methods.

The signature is:

Usage Example

Even if static class methods could be removed via remove_action / remove_filter, this function can be still useful because can remove callbacks from any priority and even without specifying a method name.

For example, we can use the following to remove all the static methods of the Foo::class attached to the init hook:

Inpsyde\remove_instance_hook()

This function can be used to remove hook callbacks added with a specific object instance.

When having access to the exact instance used to add some hooks, it would be possible to remove those hooks via core functions remove_action / remove_filter, but this function can still be useful because in a single call can remove all the hooks that use the instance, no matter the method or the priority used.

The remove_instance_hook signature is:

Usage Example

Inpsyde\remove_invokable_hook()

This function targets hooks added with invokable objects.

The signature:

Usage Example

Inpsyde\remove_all_object_hooks()

This function is used to remove all hook callbacks that use the given object or class name.

When passing an object instance, it removes all the hook callbacks using that exact instance.

When passing a class name, it removes all the hook callbacks using that class (regardless of the instance).

Static methods are removed when:

• an object instance is passed and $removeStaticCallbacks param is true
• a class name is passed and $removeStaticCallbacks param is not false

Usage Example

Minimum Requirements

Object Hooks Remover is a Composer package, installable via the package name inpsyde/object-hooks-remover.

It has no dependencies and requires PHP 7.4+.

It is tested and guaranteed to work with WP 5.9+, but should work, at least, with WP 5.3+ (which is the first version officially supporting PHP 7.4).

Copyright and License

This package is free software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or (at your option) any later version. For the full license, see LICENSE.