Call PHP file within a plugin to activate function

Question

Here’s an approach that would be more portable (so you don’t have to call wp-load.php directly, which is something you want to avoid) and also would allow you to revise the URL to not point to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory (also something you want to avoid):

add_action( 'init', 'my_pdf_generator' );
function my_pdf_generator() {

    // sniff out query args to see if this is a pdf request.
    // Note that you should probably add a unique query arg to make sure this is a ticket request.
    // Mabye something like "?eventix_order=true" or something just in case order_id and key exist in 
    // some other kind of instance.
    if ( isset( $_GET['order_id'] ) && isset( $_GET['key'] ) ) {

        nocache_headers();

        // Don't forget to sanitize 
        $orderId = $_GET['order_id'];
        $key = $_GET['key'];

        $eventixOrderId = get_post_meta( $orderId, 'eventix_order_id', true );

        if($eventixOrderId != $key){
            echo "These are not the tickets you're looking for.";
            exit;
        }

        $accessToken = get_option('eventix_access_token');  
        $curl = curl_init();

        curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
            CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET",
            CURLOPT_URL => 'https://api.eventix.io/3.0.0/order/'.$eventixOrderId.'/downloadlink',
            CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'example.com',
            CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(                                                                          
            'Content-Type: application/json',  
            'Authorization: ' . $accessToken) 
        ));

        $ticketPdf = curl_exec($curl);
        curl_close($curl);
        update_post_meta( $orderId, 'eventix_pdf_ticket', $ticketPdf ); 

        header( 'Content-Description: File Transfer' );
        header( 'Content-Type: application/pdf' );
        header( 'Content-Disposition: inline' );
        header( 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary' );
        header( 'Cache-Control: must-revalidate' );
        header( 'Pragma: public' );
        header( "Location: $ticketPdf" );
        exit();

    }
}

Doing it this way would make your link as follows:

https://example.com/?order_id=1553&key=d5df1b20-15a9-11e9-ad15-c704673daa98

What it’s doing is hooking to the ‘init’ action to check if this is a key request, and if so, it runs your process and exits at that end (so no additional WP output is sent).

That’s cleaner than putting it in a custom file, directly calling that custom file, and needing to include wp-load.php.

To use it this way, you can either just drop it in your theme’s functions.php file OR add a plugin file header to it and load it as a plugin. I’d recommend loading it as a plugin so that it is portable and not theme dependent, just in case you change things theme-wise down the road.

This would also be a starting point for other learning. This example just uses a raw query arg, but with additional research and work, you could probably learn to build it into a functional WooCommerce endpoint like:

https://example.com/eventix_order/1553/d5df1b20-15a9-11e9-ad15-c704673daa98/

Obviously, I can’t test it as is, so you may need to tweak it to make it fully functional. I also noted in the code comments that I would probably work in an additional query argument that is unique just in case “order_id” and “key” may exist together as query args somewhere else (something like “eventix_order=true” or something). You could add that to the “if” condition.

I also added some additional headers that I think make it cleaner – you may need to experiment and/or revise as needed since as I mentioned, I can’t test it exactly. But I have personally built download plugins and this comes from that work, so I think they should be correct for your purpose.

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