WordPress / WordPress/WordPress-Coding-Standards

SQL queries should not use hardcoded table names

Open
#2,008 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Focus: DB Type: Enhancement
Dominant language
PHP
Stars
2.8k
Forks
521
Avg merge
5d 20h
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Description

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Using hardcoded table names in SQL queries causes problems for multisite installations, or users who have changed the default table prefix.

Describe the solution you'd like

Queries that do not use the $wpdb->prefix to determine table names, should trigger a CS error.

$wpdb->prepare( "SELECT * FROM wordpress.wp_posts WHERE id = %d", $id);

Additional context (optional)

see also (loosely related) https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress-Coding-Standards/issues/1589

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the requested example in issue #2008 and review the loosely related issue #1589 for existing discussion. Determine how the coding-standard sniff should identify hardcoded table names versus $wpdb->prefix usage, and consider the request complete when matching queries produce a CS error without flagging supported prefixed queries.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
php
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
38/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.