Create a nag alert (update available!) checker script

Question

I have a remote updater script that resides in my wordpress theme folder. The script simply calls out to the central server and grabs a zip file which contains the latest updated files for the theme.

I'd like to enable a nag alert checker that executes whenever the theme's options panel is accessed and I'm just brainstorming it here for a sanity check.

The nag checker would simply look out on my central server and read the contents of a text file which contains the current version number (a 4 digit integer, 0001, 0002, etc and that's it).

If the 4 digit number contained in the text file is greater than the version number stored in the theme's version variable, then it would display a nag alert for the user so that they can execute the update script to retrieve the update.

Am I on the right track? Are there better ways to do this that are easier to implement? I suppose I could check a date stamp on the local update file and compare it to the update file on the server as well. Not sure which is best or easiest.

Answer 1

That sounds good to me. You can use file_get_contents() on the local and remote files (containing the version numbers), use intval() on those, and then make the comparison. If file_get_contents() doesn't work on the remove url, then you'll have to use cURL.