Plugin Possible Bug – Using Old PHP Carbon, clash with newer on another plugin?

Possibly… the fix would be:

Old Line

private static function setLastErrors(array $lastErrors)

New Line

private static function setLastErrors($lastErrors)

Can you please be kind, and have a look?

Hi Zeigel,

Many thanks for reporting this issue. From an initial look, this seems to be an issue with PHP 8.2 rather than a conflict with another plugin.

Side note: We place all external libraries in our own namespace to avoid conflicts with other plugins.

The root cause of this seems to be that In PHP 8.2, the default return value of DateTime::getLastErrors() changed. Before 8.2, it always returns an array even when there are no warnings or errors. In 8.2, it will return boolean false in this case. That’s what breaking Carbon’s constructor under PHP 8.2.

The latest release of WP SES (1.6.3) actually downgraded from Carbon V2 back to 1.x. The reason for this is that Carbon V2 is not compatible with PHP 7 unless there are polyfills for the new string functions that were introduced in PHP 8. WordPress has these polyfills in place from 5.9 and later, but that PHP7 incompatibility meant that Carbon made WP SES stop working on a large set of sites with older versions of PHP and WordPress.

Since that was the only real upgrade in v1.6.3, my best advice here is to downgrade to WP SES 1.6.2. It uses Carbon V2 which should work better on your site. If you give that a try, we will appreciate it if you report back.

Very sorry for the inconvenience and thanks again for your detailed reporting!

-et

Hi,

Please note, getting and installing, older plugin versions, is not as that simple.

Thus, I am trying to figure out a possible solution, which seems to me, to be more ‘elegant’. That would be, modifying the Plugin code, on wp-ses/vendor/CarbonCarbon.php line number 800 or so, to suit both PHP versions:

if(version_compare(PHP_VERSION, "8.2") >= 0) {
	private static function setLastErrors($lastErrors)
			{
			static::$lastErrors = $lastErrors;
			}
}
			
else {
	private static function setLastErrors(array $lastErrors)
			{
			static::$lastErrors = $lastErrors;
			}	
}	

And, just to be on safe side, I have also restarted some server services, as:

systemctl restart apache2
systemctl restart nginx
systemctl restart plesk-php82-fpm

What I have done, is placed an IF for the PHP version. version_compare compares two versions and return three boolean values, where PHP_VERSION is a built-in PHP constant returning the numerical value of the used PHP version.

Thus, if the PHP version used is “8.2” or higher, I have returned a modified plugin code line, suitable for the new PHP version 8.2 data structure. This would mean, changing the previous code line which was private static function setLastErrors(array $lastErrors) to be private static function setLastErrors($lastErrors) (omitting the “array” inside setLastErrors(...).

For the else condition, where version is lower than PHP version 8.2, I have left the original code, with the data structure containing array, suiting older PHP versions: private static function setLastErrors(array $lastErrors)

The simple usage of the version_compare() PHP function and PHP_VERSION PHP constant, is simply explained in this link, or in section below:

The examples below use the PHP_VERSION constant, because it contains the value of the PHP version that is executing the code.

Example #1 version_compare() examples

<?php
if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '7.0.0') >= 0) {
    echo 'I am at least PHP version 7.0.0, my version: ' . PHP_VERSION . "\n";
}

if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.3.0') >= 0) {
    echo 'I am at least PHP version 5.3.0, my version: ' . PHP_VERSION . "\n";
}

if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.0.0', '>=')) {
    echo 'I am at least PHP version 5.0.0, my version: ' . PHP_VERSION . "\n";
}

if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.0.0', '<')) {
    echo 'I am still PHP 4, my version: ' . PHP_VERSION . "\n";
}
?>

Problem:

Emails are still stuck in queue. Forcing the cron currently does not release them. I suspect there is another problem in the current plugin version.

Please note, I have noted that PHP error log, for some reason uses UTC and not the local time zone. I have not fully succeeded in forcing it to use the current time zone set via PHP. I am bring this issue to your attention, as I have noticed on the mySQL data base database_oses_jobs that the time zone of queued emails is also using UTC time zone as is, for the queued emails (which are said to be related to: DeliciousBrains\WP_Offload_SES\Queue\Jobs\Email_Job) fields: available_at and created_at .

Thus may I ask, if it could be, that a set to error emails, time-zone issue be related to the root problem of emails queued with error not being sent even later on?

And finally, may I ask for your opinion, and if looking good, suggest you implement it, in a new plugin version release.

I got the below PHP Error, and would soon look into it.

PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected token "if", expecting "function" or "const" in /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/wp-ses/vendor/Carbon/Carbon.php on line 802

Still no success

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by ziegel.

With the below code, it seems there is no PHP error, however emails are still stuck in the queue state:

function comprePhpVersion() {

		if(version_compare(phpversion() , "8.2") >= 0) {
			private static function setLastErrors($lastErrors)
				{
				static::$lastErrors = $lastErrors;
				}
		}
				
		else {
			private static function setLastErrors(array $lastErrors)
				{
				static::$lastErrors = $lastErrors;
				}	
		}	

}

Ok. I get what seems to be the logic of the needed fix, however do not konw the syntax and var name used, to implement it.

First it should be checked what PHP version is used. For older than version 8.2, the array data structure should be used.

For version 8.2 and newer, a second IF should be used, to see if there are errors or not. If there are errors, an array data structure should be used, and if there are no errors, the array should be removed from the code, as the result would be a bolean.

As I can not code the above on my own, although it should not be complicated at all for a junior developer, I would search for an old version of the plugin and install it. I hope disabling current plugin, and setting a new one, doesn’t break anything in the email configuration.

Can you please advise?

Ok, I have managed to install WP Offload SES Plugin Version 1.6.1, having it on a server backup file, and it seems to work smoothly.

Please let me know when version 1.6.4 out there, so I can install it.

Hi again,

Thanks for your updates along the way.

I hope disabling current plugin, and setting a new one, doesn’t break anything in the email configuration.

This is perfectly safe, the configuration format in the DB has not changed.

-et

Any updates? We continue to get errors

PHP 8.2.5 (fpm-fcgi) (built: Apr 14 2023 04:27:02)

2023/04/21 17:21:55 [error] 1052024#1052024: *1169 FastCGI sent in stderr: "PHP message: PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught TypeError: DeliciousBrains\WP_Offload_SES\Carbon\Carbon::setLastErrors(): Argument #1 ($lastErrors) must be of type array, bool given, called in /wp-content/plugins/wp-ses/vendor/Carbon/Carbon.php on line 487 and defined in /wp-content/plugins/wp-ses/vendor/Carbon/Carbon.php:800
Stack trace:
#0 /wp-content/plugins/wp-ses/vendor/Carbon/Carbon.php(487): DeliciousBrains\WP_Offload_SES\Carbon\Carbon::setLastErrors()
#1 /wp-content/plugins/wp-ses/vendor/WP-Queue/Connections/DatabaseConnection.php(166): DeliciousBrains\WP_Offload_SES\Carbon\Carbon->__construct()
#2 /wp-content/plugins/wp-ses/classes/Queue/Connection.php(160): DeliciousBrains\WP_Offload_SES\WP_Queue\Connections\DatabaseConnection->vitalize_job()

this should fix it.

--- Carbon.php.orig	2023-04-23 22:10:28.395805000 +0200
+++ Carbon.php	2023-04-23 22:07:28.731780000 +0200
@@ -797,8 +797,16 @@
      *
      * @return void
      */
-    private static function setLastErrors(array $lastErrors)
+    private static function setLastErrors($lastErrors)
     {
+	if (is_bool($lastErrors)) {
+		$lastErrors=array(
+    			"warning_count" => 0,
+    			"warnings" => Array(),
+    			"error_count" => 0,
+    			"errors" => Array()
+			);
+	}
         static::$lastErrors = $lastErrors;
     }
     /**

Hi @tikguy ,

If I got the explanation correctly:

The root cause of this seems to be that In PHP 8.2, the default return value of DateTime::getLastErrors() changed. Before 8.2, it always returns an array even when there are no warnings or errors. In 8.2, it will return boolean false in this case. That’s what breaking Carbon’s constructor under PHP 8.2.

I suspect, that the same applies to the function setLastErrors which you have used, i.e., possibly it provides two different data structure, depending if it has an error to report or it hasn’t. Testing it, to the best of my understanding, would require having a PHP error related to it.

yes. i essentially did nothing more, but
– removed the type enforcement
– added an if to check whether the received argument is a boolean (in pre8.2 php this can not happen, with 8.2+ it will only get false if there was no error)
– in this case (got false) i populate the array just as pre 8.2 php did

this fix got my queued messages delivered, as the code ran w/o hitting the old exception

And what would the code do, for the situation where there is an error?

if there’s an error, the array structure (properly populated with values) will be there as before, because the changed behaviour of php8.2 only affects the situation if there’s no error. the piece of code i added only affects the situation where there’s a boolean value as the argument of the function. if anything else comes (which by default couldn’t be anything else than an array structure) it will be passed along w/o any kind of modification