[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #5183: General Meta-Data Table

[WordPress Trac]

#5183: General Meta-Data Table
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 Reporter:  filosofo     |       Owner:  anonymous                
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new                      
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  2.4                      
Component:  General      |     Version:  2.3                      
 Severity:  normal       |    Keywords:  meta-table meta has-patch
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 As I [http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-
 hackers/2007-October/015432.html proposed on wp-hackers], it would be
 great to have a general meta table.

 There are at least a couple of benefits to such a table:

  * We could have meta-data for comments and categories.
 Others have proposed meta tables for the comments (e.g. #5153 and #2659);
 rather than
 adding meta tables seriatim, a general meta-data table would meet that
 need and offer the possibility of actually reducing the total number
 of tables.

  * It would provide a better place for plugins to store data.
 Currently, most plugins---when they don't have enough data to justify
 creating their own table---store data in the options table.  I think
 there are disadvantages to bloating the options table, one of which is
 that WP loads almost all options into the object cache.

 My attached patch includes the code necessary get such a table working in
 WP (aside from decrementing the db_version), and I've tested each of the
 get_general_meta, update_general_meta, and delete_general_meta functions
 successfully.

 By the way, update_meta and delete_meta would have been cleaner names, but
 they're already taken for admin post meta stuff.

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5183>
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