wordpress plugin access file directly in browser - wordpress

Question

I am trying to access a plugin file directly in the browser, so i can run a cron.
When i go to the correct url, i am getting a page not found error.
Does wordpress by default prevent you from accessing this directly? Is it maybe something to do with the .htaccess, or should i be able to view this directly?
I am trying to access the file located like this (just an example):
http://mywebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/askimet/askimet.php
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

WordPress does not prevent you from accessing PHP files directly. However, the PHP files themselves usually do. This basically makes sure WordPress is loaded.
In your example, akismet.php has the following
// Make sure we don't expose any info if called directly
if ( !function_exists( 'add_action' ) ) {
echo 'Hi there! I\'m just a plugin, not much I can do when called directly.';
exit;
}
You probably do want WordPress to be loaded for your plugin, though.
Instead, you need to make your plugin know of a URL construct which you can detect and intercept. For example, say you visit the page example.org/?my-plugin-action. Your plugin should check for this on normal page requests (such as init or template_redirect) and if it is found, call your PHP script, then call exit; so WordPress does not try to load a page.
function my_plugin_action() {
if ( !isset($_GET['my-plugin-action']) ) return;
echo 'Run cron task here.';
exit;
}
add_action( 'init', 'my_plugin_action' );
To recap: Don't call your plugin directly. Make a URL that displays your content, then exit the script before WordPress tries to display the default page.

Answer 2

There is no such restriction by default in WordPress. You can access a file directly in WordPress if you want to.
See if the file code contains something like below -
if ( ! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) )
//some action if accessed directly
Otherwise, check back the URL and make sure your path is correct.
One more thing, if you will access the plugin file directly and it contains any WordPress core function, it will give error since in that case, WordPress core doesn't get loaded.
However, there are some non recommended ways to load WordPress core.