So you're working on a WordPress plugin and you want to get current plugin version using PHP for display inside your plugin settings or on your plugin front end. Hardcoding the plugin version and changing it every release is no fun so in this article I'm bringing you my little PHP function I use with my Quick Chat for WordPress plugin to get current plugin version.

As always with WordPress development you need to be extra careful with your PHP and Javascript function names so you should prefix your every function with your plugin name. So here is PHP function you can use inside your plugin PHP file to get plugin version:

function plugin_name_get_version() {
    $plugin_data = get_plugin_data( __FILE__ );
    $plugin_version = $plugin_data['Version'];
    return $plugin_version;
}

Keep in mind that get_plugin_data() is available only on site backend. I guess it needs no additional explanation. Enjoy!