WordPress PHP custom function is causing 500 Internal Server Error Connection Timeout

Question

I wrote a custom script to insert a post into WordPress and upload 3 images to the WP uploads directory.

To write the post I use the WP function wp_insert_post( $wp_post_array, true );. Inside the script at various stages I also use wp_get_attachment_image_src($image_id, $size)[0];, wp_get_attachment_metadata($image_id); and wp_get_attachment_image( $image_id, 'large', false, $image_attr ); but to upload the images and create their metadata I wrote this custom function below...

I must have messed up somewhere because I get a 500 Connection Timeout error when I run this code (even though it is only 3 images that are less than 1Mb each in size).

Can somebody spot what I am doing wrong? Thank you for your eyes and experience.

function insert_WP_Images_Data( $post_id, $image_url ) {

global $writer_WP_id;

$upload_dir = wp_upload_dir();

if ( isset($image_url) && isset($post_id) ) {

    $filename = basename($image_url);
    if(wp_mkdir_p($upload_dir['path']))
        $file = $upload_dir['path'] . '/' . $filename;
    else
        $file = $upload_dir['basedir'] . '/' . $filename;
    $image_data = file_get_contents( $image_url );
    file_put_contents($file, $image_data);

    $wp_filetype = wp_check_filetype($filename, null);
    $attachment = array(
    'post_author' => $writer_WP_id,
    'post_content' => '',
    'post_title' => $_SESSION['artist'],
    'post_status' => 'inherit',
    'post_name' => pathinfo($image_url)['filename'],
    'post_mime_type' => $wp_filetype['type'],
    'post_parent' => $post_id,
    'guid' => $upload_dir['url'].'/'.$filename
    );
    //  'post_title' => sanitize_file_name($filename),

    $image_id = wp_insert_attachment( $attachment, $file, $post_id );

    require_once( ABSPATH.'wp-admin/includes/image.php' );
    $attach_data = wp_generate_attachment_metadata( $image_id, $file );
    $res1 = wp_update_attachment_metadata( $image_id, $attach_data );
    $res2 = set_post_thumbnail( $post_id, $image_id );

    return $image_id;
} else {
    echo '<span class="error">No post is selected or image is selected</span>';
}
}

I have already tried increasing my server execution time in cPanel (200, 600) and via .htaceess (300) but nothing works...

Answer 1

This function is completely unnecessary, and can be replaced with the official WP function called media_sideload_image:

media_sideload_image( string $file, int $post_id, string $desc = null, string $return = 'html' )

for example:

$new_image_id = media_sideload_image(
    "https://example.com/image.png",
    $post_id,
    "Toms great picture",
    'ID'
);

https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/media_sideload_image/

Don't forget to check the result, if this fails it will return a WP_Error object, and you must handle it. The error object contains the message telling you what went wrong, and it's why your original code failed mysteriously ( it never checked for errors so if one happened it didn't say anything ).

If you want to use this outside WP Admin, you'll need to include one or two files before using it. Read the official documentation for how to do that