If the Legacy REST API plugin is auto-installed once, do not auto-install a second time.

[barryhughes]

Currently:

• When WooCommerce is updated, we check to see if the Legacy REST API is enabled.
• If it is enabled, we automatically install the Legacy REST API plugin (for continuity reasons).
• If the Legacy REST API plugin is subsequently removed, then on the next WooCommerce update we still perform the same check and will re-install (the legacy plugin) if needed.

This change makes it so automated installation only happens once. Therefore, if the plugin is subsequently removed merchants will A) need to manually re-install it if desired B) won't have to manually remove it on subsequent plugin updates.

To achieve this, these code changes are implemented:

1. PluginInstaller will now maintain a new option, woocommerce_history_of_autoinstalled_plugins, in addition to the already existing woocommerce_autoinstalled_plugins. Both contain the same information, the difference is that the information in the new option is never deleted (the information in the old option is deleted if the plugin is manually reinstalled).
2. PluginInstaller::maybe_install_legacy_api_plugin will now check if the Legacy REST API plugin is listed in either of the options (the new one should be enough, we check the old one too for robustness) and if so the plugin won't be installed (the woocommerce_skip_legacy_rest_api_plugin_auto_install filter still works as expected).
3. A migration is also added to create the new option from the contents of the old one.

How to test the changes in this Pull Request:

Testing the usual flow

Setup:

1. Start with a clean installation of WordPress.
2. Install WooCommerce 8.8.0.
3. You may benefit from a tool (WooCommerce Beta Tester, or WP CLI) that makes it easy to switch between versions.

Special note for those using Jurassic Ninja: if you start with the latest version of WooCommerce, that's fine, but make sure you:

• Downgrade to 8.8.0.
• Reset the installed version information stored in the database. Using WP CLI:

wp option set woocommerce_version 8.8.0

From there:

1. Navigate to WooCommerce ▸ Settings ▸ Advanced ▸ Legacy API and enable the Legacy REST API.
2. Update to WooCommerce 8.9.0. You should find that the Legacy REST API plugin has been automatically installed (consider refreshing the plugin admin list to see this):

3. Deactivate and delete the Legacy REST API plugin.
4. Now upgrade to this branch. You may wish to do this by manually uploading the zip produced by the build live branches action and overwriting the existing copy of WooCommerce.
5. The Legacy REST API plugin should not have been re-installed.

Testing the manual reinstall flow

From the current state:

8. Deactivate and delete the Legacy REST API plugin, then reinstall and activate it manually, then deactivate and delete again.
9. Run wp option get woocommerce_autoinstalled_plugins, it should say that the option doesn't exist.
10. Run wp option get woocommerce_history_of_autoinstalled_plugins, you should get the plugin information.
11. Trick WooCommerce into believing it's in an older version, so reinstalling the same version will trigger the install workflow again: wp option set woocommerce_version 8.8.0
12. Reinstall WooCommerce from the zip of this branch: again, the Legacy REST API plugin should not have been re-installed.

🔌 woocommerce.zip (pre-built plugin zip for this branch—last updated 2024-05-17 13:30 UTC)

[github-actions]

Test using WordPress Playground

The changes in this pull request can be previewed and tested using a WordPress Playground instance.
WordPress Playground is an experimental project that creates a full WordPress instance entirely within the browser.

Test this pull request with WordPress Playground.

Note that this URL is valid for 30 days from when this comment was last updated. You can update it by closing/reopening the PR or pushing a new commit.

[github-actions]

Hi @jorgeatorres, @Konamiman,

Apart from reviewing the code changes, please make sure to review the testing instructions as well.

You can follow this guide to find out what good testing instructions should look like:
https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/wiki/Writing-high-quality-testing-instructions

[Konamiman]

We can't use the woocommerce_autoinstalled_plugins option for this, because the information in this option is deleted if the plugin is reinstalled manually. We need to use a different option, something like woocommerce_history_of_autoinstalled_plugins.

[vedanshujain]

LGTM!

[jorgeatorres]

LGTM.

[barryhughes]

Thanks for the amendments!

☑️ 8.8.0 → 8.9.0 (legacy plugin installed, then deleted) → this branch (legacy plugin not installed a second time)

☑️ 8.8.0 → straight to this branch (legacy plugin installed)

📝 Noting I am currently reliant on testing via JN, as I'm currently having some build problems with the mono-repo locally.

---

@Konamiman there was a side discussion about simplifying this down, so that the auto-installation logic is simply contained in a regular migration (in wc-update-functions.php).

This might avoid us having to track the auto-installation history, because (typically) that migration function will only be executed once, whenever a user upgrades to or past the specified version. Could this reduce complexity?

I'm also quite happy to move ahead with the current approach, so we can expedite inclusion in the upcoming release—but wanted to run this by you.