Check if post of title already exists

Question

I'm writing a plugin that takes an xml feed and posts it into WordPress using wp-cron

Everything is working dandy, except it keeps adding the same posts over again.

So, I'm working on a system to check to see if a post of that title already exists.

I've written this, but its always returning 'already exists'

global $wpdb;
        $query = $wpdb->prepare('SELECT ID FROM ' . $wpdb->posts . ' WHERE post_title = %s', $article->heading);
        $wpdb->query( $query );

        if ( $wpdb->num_rows ) {
            error_log('already exists');
        } else {                
            wp_insert_post($post, $wp_error);
        }

I'm fairly new to working with the database side of WordPress and I saw the $wpdb when googling for help. Now, I haven't defined this anywhere but the place I was reading seemed to suggest it was built in.

All help appreciated!

Thanks

Answer 1

Yes $wpdb is built in and is loaded by the WordPress Core on every page load.

I don't see any critical problem with your code. I am going to suggest some improvements because I see some places where could go wrong, but mostly that should work. That makes me think that $article->heading is not matching up to the inserted post_title. So...

Try to normalize your title with sanitize_title_with_dashes which is how WordPress builds the post slug, and then check for that slug instead.

global $wpdb;
        $query = $wpdb->prepare('SELECT ID FROM ' . $wpdb->posts . ' WHERE post_name = %s', sanitize_title_with_dashes($article->heading));
        $cID = $wpdb->get_var( $query );

Now your query is looking for post_name, which is the slug or permalink tail, and I changed $wpdb->query to $wpdb->get_var since you are looking for a single variable, which we save to $cID.

Use a better check for your conditional.

if ( !empty($cID) ) {

However, this might not be the right approach at all. Look into the XML_RPC API mentioned by @kaiser. It has post insertion capabilities.

Answer 2

If you want to find if a POST with TITLE already exists, then you can use:

method 1)

$title = 'mytitlee';

global $wpdb;
$id_ofpost_name = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_name = $title");
$id_ofpost_title = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_title = $title");
if ($id_ofpost_name || $id_ofpost_title) {echo 'Exists, here is the id:'.$id_ofpost_title.$id_ofpost_name;} 
else {echo 'post wasnt found';}

method 2) (this method is without Mysql query, so it may be a bit slower).

$title = 'my_slug';
//you can use post_types too
$ptype='';

global $wpdb;
global $post;
$args = array( 'post_type' => $ptype);
$allPosts = get_posts($args);
$smthh='no';
foreach( $allPosts as $page )
{
    if( $smthh == 'no' && ($page->post_name == $title ||  $page->post_title == $title) )
    {$smthh='yes'; break; }
}


if ( $smthh == 'yes' )
{ 
    echo "yes, post was found";
}

else
{
    echo "no, not found";

    // You can insert the post too
    $my_post = array( 'post_type'    => $ptype, 'post_title'    => $title, 'post_content'  => 'This is my post content.', 'post_status'   => 'publish', );
    wp_insert_post( $my_post );
}