activate_plugins

Searching of ‘activate_plugins’ string occurrences result in this files list: wp-admin/menu.php, wp-admin/freedoms.php, wp-admin/plugins.php, wp-admin/includes/class-plugins-list-table.php, wp-admin/includes/schema.php.
Let’s begin?

wp-admin/menu.php gives us the confirmation for the WordPress Codex declaration above. To be more exact this code – allows access to Administrator menu item “Plugins” and “Installed Plugins” submenu item under menu “Plugins”:

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	$menu[65] = array( sprintf( __('Plugins %s'), $count ), 'activate_plugins', 'plugins.php', '', 'menu-top menu-icon-plugins', 'menu-plugins', 'div' );
 
	$submenu['plugins.php'][5]  = array( __('Installed Plugins'), 'activate_plugins', 'plugins.php' );

WordPress Plugins, Installed plugins menu

wp-admin/freedoms.php contains the same link to plugins.php and shows it to users with ‘activate_plugins’ capability only.

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$plugins_url = current_user_can( 'activate_plugins' ) ? admin_url( 'plugins.php' ) : 'http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/';

Where to find this page? Its new feature introduced in WordPress 3.3. At the left corner of WordPress admin back-end menu bar you can see small WordPress logo. After click on it you will see submenu as on image below. Click ‘About WordPress’ and ‘Freedoms’ to achieve freedoms.php resulting page.

WordPress About from admin menu bar

wp-admin/plugins.php – this is WordPress plugins administration panel. And you can achieve it in that case only if you have activate_plugins capability.

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if ( !current_user_can('activate_plugins') )
	wp_die( __( 'You do not have sufficient permissions to manage plugins for this site.' ) );

For the multi-site WordPress installation you should have network superadmin rights additionally.
Further in the code WordPress checks activate_plugins capability again before execute these actions:
– Activate plugins:

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	switch ( $action ) {
		case 'activate':
			if ( ! current_user_can('activate_plugins') )
				wp_die(__('You do not have sufficient permissions to activate plugins for this site.'));

– Make bulk activation for current blog and bulk network wide activation on selected plugins:

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		case 'activate-selected':
		case 'network-activate-selected':
			if ( ! current_user_can('activate_plugins') )
				wp_die(__('You do not have sufficient permissions to activate plugins for this site.'));

– Display error messages concerning plugins management:

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case 'error_scrape':
			if ( ! current_user_can('activate_plugins') )
				wp_die(__('You do not have sufficient permissions to activate plugins for this site.'));

– Deactivate plugins:

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		case 'deactivate':
			if ( ! current_user_can('activate_plugins') )
				wp_die(__('You do not have sufficient permissions to deactivate plugins for this site.'));

– Deactivate selected plugins:

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		case 'deactivate-selected':
			if ( ! current_user_can('activate_plugins') )
				wp_die(__('You do not have sufficient permissions to deactivate plugins for this site.'));

wp-admin/includes/class-wp-plugins-list-table.php is used to show plugins list in table format and override ajax_user_can() method of parent WP_List_Table class in relation of plugins management:

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function ajax_user_can() {
		if ( is_multisite() ) {
			$menu_perms = get_site_option( 'menu_items', array() );
 
			if ( empty( $menu_perms['plugins'] ) && ! is_super_admin() )
				return false;
		}
 
		return current_user_can('activate_plugins');
	}

ajax_user_can() method is used by wp-admin/admin_ajax.php to check if current user has permission to execute operation via AJAX request.

wp-admin/includes/schema.php at line #580 inserts activate_plugins capability into Administrator role during WordPress installation.

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	// Add caps for Administrator role
	$role =& get_role('administrator');
	$role->add_cap('switch_themes');
	$role->add_cap('edit_themes');
	$role->add_cap('activate_plugins');

Tags: user capability, User Role, WordPress

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2011 at 01:43 and is filed under WordPress, WordPress Capabilities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.