Set a post expiration and delete a post when expirate

Question

Set a post expiration and delete a post when expirate

willwoody

2022年5月3日 15:08

I'm trying to create a function that allows me to delete an article when the date of the day is equal or superior than a date filled in a custom ACF field.

I wrote the function below that I placed in my single.php in order to test it. It works, except that you must be reading the article in question for this function to execute (pretty logical actually).

What I want is that this function runs itself on all the articles, automatically, without having to go to the articles. This is where It's difficult for me, I often use plugins to do things like that.

Could you show me some ways to achieve the desired result? I'm really looking for improve my back-end skills using Wordpress, so I'm not asking particulary for a ready-made solution but ways to guide my work.

Here's the function :

/**
 * Draft after expiration
 */

function draft_the_post(){
    $expire_date = get_field( "field_5cef86384e5f2" );
    $actual_date = date("d-m-Y");
    $postid = $post-ID;

    if ($expire_date = $actual_date) {
        wp_update_post(array(
            'ID'    =  $postid,
            'post_status'   =  'draft'
        ));
    } else {
        echo "Not same date or inferior than today";
    };
}

Oh and, excuse my english I'm French :-)

I thank you in advance, willwoody.

Topic wp-update-post date functions posts Wordpress

Category Web

gdarko · Accepted Answer · 2019年5月30日 11:57

The correct way is to use WordPress Cron and schedule your event. Also you should consider adding real cron job as outlined here for better precision.

1.) I modified your draft_the_post function to support parameter. So now we can specify which post and also i updated the portion that checking the time.

2.) dg_cron_schedule_delete_posts will schedule the hook if it's not scheduled when init hook is fired. I set it to hourly for better precision but you can also set it to daily. Note: If you are doing this with plugin it's better to use the activation hook and schedule it here.

3.) dg_delete_posts_handler is where the deletion is handled. It goes through all the posts and calls the function maybe_draft_the_post on each. Note: This queries all the posts so depending of how big is your data this may cause performance issues. I suggest implementing some kind of queue but this should be a good starting point.

/**
 * Function that will draft specific post on specific conditions
 *
 * @param \WP_Post $_post
 */
function maybe_draft_the_post( $_post ) {
    $expire_date = get_field( "your_field_name" );
    // Bail if no expire date set.
    if ( ! $expire_date ) {
        return;
    }
    $expire_date = strtotime( $expire_date );
    $actual_date = time();
    if ( $expire_date <= $actual_date ) {
        wp_update_post( array(
            'ID'          => $_post->ID,
            'post_status' => 'draft'
        ) );
    }
}

/**
 * Register cron event on init action
 */
function dg_cron_schedule_delete_posts() {
    $timestamp = wp_next_scheduled( 'dg_delete_posts' );
    if ( $timestamp == false ) {
        wp_schedule_event( time(), 'hourly', 'dg_delete_posts' );
    }
}
add_action( 'init', 'dg_cron_schedule_delete_posts' );

/**
 * Handle deletion of posts periodically.
 * - Loop through the posts and call the draft_the_post function.
 */
function dg_delete_posts_handler() {
    $posts = get_posts( array(
        'posts_per_page' => - 1,
        'post_type'      => 'post',
        'post_status'    => 'publish',
    ) );
    foreach ( $posts as $_post ) {
        maybe_draft_the_post( $_post );
    }
}
add_action( 'dg_delete_posts', 'dg_delete_posts_handler' );

Set a post expiration and delete a post when expirate

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