Determining Plugin and Content Directories

When coding WordPress plugins you often need to reference various files and folders throughout the WordPress installation and within your plugin or theme.

WordPress provides several functions for easily determining where a given file or directory lives. Always use these functions in your plugins instead of hard-coding references to the wp-content directory or using the WordPress internal constants.

PHP’s __FILE__ magic-constant resolves symlinks automatically, so if the  wp-content  or  wp-content/plugins  or even the individual plugin directory is symlinked, hardcoded paths will not work correctly.

Common Usage

If your plugin includes JavaScript files, CSS files or other external files, then it’s likely you’ll need the URL to these files so you can load them into the page. To do this you should use the  plugins_url()  function like so:

 plugins_url( 'myscript.js', __FILE__ );

This will return the full URL to myscript.js, such as  example.com/wp-content/plugins/myplugin/myscript.js .

To load your plugins’ JavaScript or CSS into the page you should use  wp_enqueue_script()  or  wp_enqueue_style()  respectively, passing the result of  plugins_url()  as the file URL.

Available Functions

WordPress includes many other functions for determining paths and URLs to files or directories within plugins, themes, and WordPress itself. See the individual DevHub pages for each function for complete information on their use.

Plugins

 plugins_url() plugin_dir_url() plugin_dir_path() plugin_basename()

Themes

 get_template_directory_uri() get_stylesheet_directory_uri() get_stylesheet_uri() get_theme_root_uri() get_theme_root() get_theme_roots() get_stylesheet_directory() get_template_directory()

Site Home

 home_url() get_home_path()

WordPress

 admin_url() site_url() content_url() includes_url() wp_upload_dir()

Multisite

 get_admin_url() get_home_url() get_site_url() network_admin_url() network_site_url() network_home_url()

Constants

WordPress makes use of the following constants when determining the path to the content and plugin directories. These should not be used directly by plugins or themes, but are listed here for completeness.

 WP_CONTENT_DIR  // no trailing slash, full paths only WP_CONTENT_URL  // full url  WP_PLUGIN_DIR  // full path, no trailing slash WP_PLUGIN_URL  // full url, no trailing slash // Available per default in MS,  not set in single site install // Can be used in single site installs (as usual: at your own risk) UPLOADS // (If set, uploads folder, relative to ABSPATH) (for e.g.: /wp-content/uploads)

Related

WordPress Directories :

home_url()	Home URL	http://www.example.com
site_url()	Site directory URL	http://www.example.com or http://www.example.com/wordpress
admin_url()	Admin directory URL	http://www.example.com/wp-admin
includes_url()	Includes directory URL	http://www.example.com/wp-includes
content_url()	Content directory URL	http://www.example.com/wp-content
plugins_url()	Plugins directory URL	http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins
wp_upload_dir()	Upload directory URL (returns an array)	http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads