Question

I need my plugin to run a function immediately after the plugin has been installed. The reason I need to run the function after and not during the installation is because none of the hooks work until “after” the plugin is activated and I need to do some additional install synching with a thirdparty server and I need those hooks.

So far I’ve found nothing that does what I want. The crons functions, from what I can tell and from what the codex says, only fire after someone visits the site. This is a “no no”. The plugin cannot wait some “random” period of time. It might even be a serious security risk.

Answer 1

Thirlan, I have the same problem. I haven’t been able to come up with a great solution, so what I’m doing is on plugin activate I’m setting a update_option and then once the settings page is visited I’m checking for the get_option to check for my one-time setting and if it’s there, I fire off the function and delete_option. Now this won’t exactly work for you, but… you might be able to figure out how to apply this filter:

http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks/hook/install_plugin_complete_actions?version=3.0&file=wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php

or you might be able to sort of use my method. Try this:

register_activation_hook(__FILE__, 'initialize_my_function');
function initialize_my_function() {
    add_option('run_my_initialization',"1");
}

add_action('admin_init', 'launch_activation_script');

function launch_activation_script() {
    if (get_option('run_my_initialization') == "1") {
        //Do Your Init Stuff Here
        delete_option('run_my_initialization');
    }
}