Flush Rewrite Rules

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In this episode, you will learn about why, when, what, and how of flushing the rewrite rules for your new custom post type. You’ll learn about permalinks, Rewrite API, and how the page request is mapped through the rewrite rules to figure out what record to pull from the Posts database table.

The starter plugin you got at the start of this lab has the rewrite the right way. It’s attached to the plugin activation event. That is the right way to do it.

Why? Rebuilding (flushing) rewrites is an expensive process. It takes a lot of time to do it, which slows down the website.

Flushing rewrite rules after registering a custom post type slows down your website #WordPress Share on X

Far too often I see people adding flush_rewrite_rules right after the register_post_type(). That is wrong. You will see why in this episode. Why? It happens on every single web page request. It slows down your website. That’s bad. Listen to me. Don’t do it.

When to flush rewrite rules for a #WordPress custom post type? Plugin activation & deactivation Share on X

Instead, attach the rewrite to the plugin activation.

Let’s explore permalinks, rewrites, activation, and the database.

Update: Improvement for the Deactivation Hook

In the video, you saw that if you make the deactivate callback register_deactivation_hook( __FILE__, 'flush_rewrite_rules' ); it didn’t give us a 404 as it should. Right? To fix that wonky behavior, let’s add a callback and then just delete out the “rewrite rules” option in the database.

The revised code then is this:
[php]
/**
* The plugin is deactivating. Delete out the rewrite rules option.
*
* @since 1.0.1
*
* @return void
*/
function deactivate_plugin() {
delete_option( ‘rewrite_rules’ );
}
[/php]

Now on plugin deactivation, you do get a 404 instead of the weird Posts Page coming up.

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Total Lab Runtime: 01:20:49

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Lab: Custom Post Type Basics

Update: Improvement for the Deactivation Hook

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