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Victor Aigbeghian edited this page Jun 6, 2026 · 1 revision

Architecture

Intercessor is organized as a modern WordPress plugin using PHP namespaces, a custom PSR-4 autoloader, and the BerlinDB library for custom database tables.

Directory Structure

intercessor/
├── intercessor.php          Main plugin file (bootstrap)
├── index.php                Silence-is-golden security file
├── uninstall.php            Cleanup on deletion
├── readme.txt               WordPress.org readme
├── assets/
│   ├── css/                 Stylesheets (3 files)
│   │   ├── admin.css        Admin dashboard styles
│   │   ├── iconfont.css     Icon font definitions
│   │   └── public.css       Front-end block styles
│   ├── fonts/               Intercessor icon font (eot/svg/ttf/woff)
│   └── js/
│       ├── admin/
│       │   └── admin.js     Admin dashboard script
│       ├── blocks/          Webpack-built Gutenberg blocks
│       │   ├── prayer-form/
│       │   ├── prayer-history/
│       │   └── prayer-wall/
│       └── public/          Front-end scripts (unminified)
│           ├── prayer-form.js
│           ├── prayer-history.js
│           └── prayer-wall.js
├── src/                     PHP source (autoloaded)
│   ├── Plugin.php           Central controller
│   ├── Loader.php           Hook registration
│   ├── Activator.php        Activation routines
│   ├── Roles.php            Roles and capabilities
│   ├── Requirements.php     PHP/WP version checks
│   ├── Admin/               Dashboard pages, settings, list tables
│   ├── Block/               Gutenberg block render callbacks
│   ├── Database/            BerlinDB tables, schemas, queries, rows
│   ├── Http/                Request handling, REST API, submissions
│   ├── Public/              Front-end asset loading
│   ├── Reports/             Reporting views and stats
│   ├── Tools/               Import/export handlers
│   ├── Util/                Cron, rate limiter, profanity filter, etc.
│   ├── blocks/              Gutenberg block source (JSX/JS)
│   └── includes/berlindb/   Bundled BerlinDB library
├── templates/               PHP templates
│   ├── admin/               Dashboard page templates
│   └── blocks/              Block render templates
├── languages/               Translation files (.pot, .po, .mo)
├── scripts/                 Build/packaging scripts
└── tests/                   PHPUnit test suite

Autoloading

A custom PSR-4 autoloader (Util\Autoloader) maps the Intercessor\ namespace to the src/ directory. Class names map directly to filenames: Intercessor\Block\Prayer_Wall_Block loads from src/Block/Prayer_Wall_Block.php.

Plugin Lifecycle

  1. intercessor.php defines constants (INTERCESSOR_VERSION, INTERCESSOR_DIR, INTERCESSOR_URL, INTERCESSOR_FILE), registers the autoloader, and calls Plugin::instance().
  2. Plugin is a singleton that wires up the Loader, Admin_Loader, Public_Loader, Block_Loader, Rest_Api, Cron_Handler, and other subsystems via WordPress hooks.
  3. Activator runs on plugin activation to create database tables, register roles, and store the plugin version.
  4. uninstall.php runs on deletion and optionally drops all data based on the delete_data_on_uninstall setting.

Database Layer

Intercessor uses BerlinDB, a lightweight ORM-like library for WordPress custom tables. Each entity has four classes:

  • Table — defines the table name, version, and schema SQL
  • Schema — declares columns and their types
  • Query — provides CRUD operations and query building
  • Row — represents a single record as a typed object

See Database Schema for the full table definitions.

Block Registration

Blocks are registered via Block_Loader, which maps each block slug to a render-callback class and registers them using register_block_type() from the built assets/js/blocks/{slug}/ directory (which contains block.json, compiled index.js, and index.asset.php).

The block source (JSX) lives in src/blocks/ and is compiled with webpack. See Building from Source for build instructions.

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