SQL script for publishing

The plugin almost certainly works off of a filter or action hook that fires when the post is published. There’s a slew of potential hooks that might be used, so you need to examine the plugin code to determine which hooks it’s using. Once you find that, your code needs to apply or do the same filter or action. You may need to pass the same values as the apply_filters() or do_action() call does in the core source code. It depends on what values the plugin uses. Even if no values are used (unlikely), you still need to pass dummy parameters to match the number passed in core source.

Thanks for the response. Any idea how to do this with a cron rather than running it via a SQL script?

Or better yet, any idea how to duplicate the action of clicking the “publish” button?

I think you are dead on with the plugin working from a hook or filter, but digging through the plugin code is pretty daunting.

There’s some issues using cron with WP, I’d look at using wp_schedule_event() before considering cron. It too has some issues, but nothing serious IMO.

You shouldn’t have to dig too deep into the plugin code, you merely need to find the right call to add_action() or add_filter(). I would bet the action is likely ‘draft_to_publish’ or something closely related. Are you familiar with the *nix grep command? You can quickly identify all files that contain a certain text string with it. They are all likely in one file. If you don’t have terminal access, unzip the plugin files on your own computer and use something equivalent that runs on your O/S.

Yeah I scanned it, but there are dozens of instances of add_action() and add_filter().

I looked to wp_schedule_event() and this may work, but still not sure how to configure it to set all draft posts to publish.

I am not new to WP, but definitely new the the wp_cron side of things.

Basically just follow the example. Where the example has // do something you could get all draft posts created in the last time period. For each post object change $post->post_status to ‘publish’, then use wp_update_post(). Doing so will cause ‘draft_to_publish’ and all other appropriate actions to fire.

Still not exactly like clicking the “Publish” button, but I think it will have the desired effect. One odd thing about scheduled events is that some sort of WP request needs to happen in order for the event to execute. The event may not execute exactly on schedule on low traffic sites. On local test installations the event will not execute at all unless you load a page to trigger the script. On live sites there should be enough search bot traffic such that live visitors are not needed.

Am I way off or something like this?

$my_post = array(
  'post_type'       = 'post',
  'post_status'      = 'publish'
  );
  wp_update_post( $my_post );

I feel like I am missing something… Like stating where post_status = draft

At the very least you need a post ID in order to use wp_update_post(). Use get_posts() or create a new WP_Query object to get all draft posts. Then loop through the results to update the status.

You may want to qualify draft posts that you do not want published with something like a special category or tag. When you periodically get all draft posts, exclude such posts from the query.

Thanks BCW. I will circle back around after I spend some time on this today. I appreciate your help.

I saw in your other topic on this issue that the plugin failed to trigger when updating the status this way. Very disappointing! There are a few other actions that fire when actually publishing a post via the edit screen, I imagine the plugin is using one of these.

I suppose you could trace through all the code that executes from where ever the edit form submits to, and test fire every hook encountered until you find which one works. Then fire that hook with your scheduled task along with changing the status.

Yeah that may be the last resort. Trying to dig deeper into the plugin code. There may be a way to put it on a schedule then all I can skip the draft to publish.