Utils

Property	Value
description	Current utility-wrapper settings and loading behavior shipped by MAC Core.
tags	doc, mac-core, setting, utils
rating

Human: 4 - AI-assisted (low impact)

Some AI used for minor parts (phrasing, ideas), but nothing critical. Fully reviewed.

Overview

The utils settings module controls whether the public mac_* utility wrappers are loaded at runtime.

This module does not change what the underlying utility classes do. It controls the supported public wrapper surface that builders use in templates, Bricks, and lightweight site code.

Current Settings

Setting key	Default	Behavior
utils_enabled	false	Master switch for all public utility wrappers.
count_array_items_enabled	false	Loads mac_count_array_items().
format_datetime_enabled	false	Loads mac_format_datetime().
format_price_enabled	false	Loads mac_format_price().
post_type_label_enabled	false	Loads mac_get_post_type_label().
taxonomy_label_enabled	false	Loads mac_get_taxonomy_label().
post_terms_enabled	false	Loads mac_get_post_terms().
plugin_status_enabled	false	Loads mac_get_plugin_status().
theme_status_enabled	false	Loads mac_get_theme_status().

Loading Rules

The loading rules are intentionally simple:

• if utils_enabled is false, no public util wrappers are loaded
• if utils_enabled is true, each util still needs its own toggle enabled
• when both the master toggle and the util toggle are enabled, the wrapper is registered during plugin bootstrap

Migration Note

Breaking behavior change

Older builds could end up with some util wrappers available incidentally because the underlying class files were loaded. That is no longer the supported behavior. Wrapper availability is now explicit and settings-driven.

If a site already uses mac_* util wrappers:

• enable Enable MAC Core utils
• enable the specific util wrappers that site code actually uses

If a site does not need the wrappers yet, leave them off.

Security and Scope

The Utils module is about intentional loading and a cleaner public API surface.

It is not a hard security boundary. The underlying utility classes still exist in the plugin codebase. The settings module controls the supported wrapper functions, not total class autoloading isolation.