Rendering the admin page contents using the Settings API

In addition to creating administration pages through HTML code, WordPress also offers a set of functions referred to as the Settings API that can be used to automate the creation of configuration pages. While the work required to put this rendering technique in place is overly complex for plugins that only have a handful of options, it is definitely useful if you are dealing with tens or hundreds of configuration fields, simplifying the task of writing out HTML code for every single item to calling a single function for each of them. It also provides some automation around the processing and storing of plugin configuration data.

This recipe explains how to specify the contents of a configuration page using the Settings API and how to provide rendering functions for the most commonly used types of form fields used in configuration pages. It uses the same set of configuration options as the other recipes in this chapter to show...