WordPress Plugin: Call function on button click in admin panel

Question

I need to create a WordPress plugin that calls a PHP function when a button in an admin panel is clicked. I\'ve been looking at tutorials for writing basic WordPress plugins an

Answer 1

Although the answers on this page provided a useful start, it took a while for me to figure out how to get option (2) working. Given this, the following code might be of help to some people.

If you create a plugin with the following code and it will add a left hand menu option called 'Test Button' when you are in the admin area. Click on this and you will see a button. Clicking that button runs the test_button_action function. In my example function I've both put a message on the page and written to a log file.

';

  echo '
Test Button Demo
';

  // Check whether the button has been pressed AND also check the nonce
  if (isset($_POST['test_button']) && check_admin_referer('test_button_clicked')) {
    // the button has been pressed AND we've passed the security check
    test_button_action();
  }

  echo '
';

  // this is a WordPress security feature - see: https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Nonces
  wp_nonce_field('test_button_clicked');
  echo '';
  submit_button('Call Function');
  echo '
';

  echo '