Coming from a WordPress background, stepping into the world of Frappe felt like discovering a familiar universe—but on steroids.
Both platforms share a common philosophy: get developers up and running quickly with minimal code, and make extensibility a first-class citizen. But what truly caught me off guard was just how much Frappe offers out of the box. From user permissions to REST APIs and background jobs, the framework comes preloaded with tools you’d otherwise have to assemble manually in many ecosystems.
As a developer, it’s a dream—until it isn’t.
Much like WordPress, Frappe’s magic lies in its extensibility. In WordPress, this is largely made possible through its hook system, a set of actions and filters that allow plugins to integrate seamlessly into the core. WooCommerce, for example, uses this system extensively—it offers nearly 200 documented hooks, enabling developers to inject or modify behavior almost anywhere in the plugin lifecycle.
This powerful pattern enables a plugin ecosystem where everything is extendable without modifying the core. Want to change the checkout flow? Hook into it. Need to inject some logic into the cart process? There’s a filter for that.
Frappe implements a similar mechanism through its get_hooks system. With this, you can dynamically execute registered methods simply by defining the right hook. Whether you’re tapping into doc_events to respond to document lifecycle changes, or using override_whitelisted_methods to replace existing logic with your own, hooks offer a clean and scalable way to extend functionality.
If you’ve built anything complex in Frappe, chances are you’ve already used these. But as your app grows, complexity creeps in. That’s usually when developers begin leaning on method overrides as a quick fix.
And while overrides might feel like a lifesaver, they come with serious baggage:
- Core functionality might break in unexpected ways.
- You now own the maintenance—future updates can break your overrides.
- Upgrading becomes risky, often filled with regression surprises.
- And suddenly, the framework that made development easy starts to feel like it’s fighting you.
In panic, some devs even resort to monkey-patching, sacrificing long-term stability for short-term relief. I’ve seen it happen —and I’ve been guilty of it myself.
But here’s the truth: most of these problems could’ve been avoided with hooks.
Frappe supports custom hooks—but they’re not used nearly as often as they should be. Too often, developers reach for the override hammer instead of exposing a clean hook that would solve the problem with elegance and safety.
This isn’t just about what Frappe as a framework offers—it’s about how we build on top of it. When we create Frappe apps, we need to think like the WordPress ecosystem does: not just in terms of features, but in terms of flexibility and extensibility.
Hooks shouldn’t just be reserved for surface-level events like document updates or API calls. Sometimes, the real extensibility needs to happen deeper, within the underlying logic itself.
Take, for example, two of the biggest apps in the ecosystem: ERPNext and Frappe HR. The Employee doctype is defined in ERPNext, but Frappe HR overrides and extends it to suit its own requirements. And it’s not just Employee—several components get overridden in a similar way to achieve the desired behavior.
Now imagine this: what if these apps exposed hooks not just for events, but for the logic beneath them? Would there still be a need to override core behavior? In many cases, probably not.
Of course, not everything can be made dynamic, and that’s okay. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Build with hooks in mind. Let others extend, modify, and adapt your app—without touching the core.
After all, the best platforms are the ones that invite collaboration and customization.
So the next time you’re building a Frappe app, ask yourself: Am I making it easy for the next developer to build on top of my work?
Because when you do, you’re not just building an app—you’re building an ecosystem.
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