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What is Clarkson Core?

Clarkson Core is an plugin that enables you to use the Twig templating engine inside your Theme and Plugins. It also delivers base classes for the WordPress data types which encourage you to write more Object-Orientated code. This results in cleaner code and a better workflow.

What is Twig and why do we use it?

Twig is a (HTML) templating engine that makes it easier for both front-end and back-end developers to work on your project. It helps you separate logic from template files and allows you to write modular, more efficient and easier to maintain code. Clarkson is build so that the default WordPress Theming hierarchy is respected. Just like Rails, Drupal, Laravel and other platforms do.

Here is an example of a Twig file used in Clarkson Theme.

single.twig

{% extends "layouts/full-width.twig" %}
{% block content %}
    {% for object in objects %}
        {% include 'partials/content.twig' %}
    {% endfor %}
{% endblock %}

partials/content.twig

{%  set object = objects|first %}

<article {{ post_class( object.get_ID() ) }}>
    <header>
        <h1 class="entry-title">{{ object.get_title() | raw }}</h1>
    </header>
    <div class="entry-content">
        {{ object.get_content() | raw }}
    </div>
</article>

Object Oriented WordPress Objects like Posts and Terms

Clarkson contains default classes that, for example, common WordPress objects that represent WP_Post, WP_Term and WP_User and can be extended and customized for your own Custom Post Types, Taxonomies or Users. We also call them WordPres Objects.

Do you remember how to retrieve a post thumbnail?

The old way

$thumb_id = get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID );
$url = wp_get_attachment_url( $thumb_id );
<img src="<?php echo esc_url( $url ); ?>" alt="Thumbnail for <?php echo $post->post_title; ?>" />

The Clarkson way

{{ object.get_thumbnail() }}

Why not plugin or Framework XYZ?

The combination of loading the WordPress objects and removing the need of duplicating .php (Timber) left use with building Clarkson. We also wanted that all the post that were available in The Loop became one global variable which led us to the objects variable within the Twig templates. There was also no need for any fancy new routing logic because there already are alternatives for that like HM Rewrite.

Easy installation

Can be installed via Composer