Update Custom Post Meta Even if Draft

Question

I currently have a WooCommerce site with the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin. I am trying to add post meta when creating a new subscription order via the dashboard and am having trouble getting the meta to save when the subscription is still pending.

I need the value to save only when a couple of conditions are met:

• First only when the post is created via the WordPress dashboard and not via the shopping cart system on the front end.
• Second only when the meta does not already exist, only for new posts
• This needs to happen even when the post is still pending

This is what I currently have:

add_action( 'added_post_meta', 'shop_sync_on_shop_subscription_save', 10, 4 );
add_action( 'updated_post_meta', 'shop_sync_on_shop_subscription_save', 10, 4 );
function shop_sync_on_shop_subscription_save( $meta_id, $post_id, $meta_key, $meta_value ) {
        if ( $meta_key == '_edit_lock' ) { // we've been editing the post
            if ( get_post_type( $post_id ) == 'shop_subscription' ) { // we've been editing a subscription
                $remaining_issues = get_post_meta($post_id, '_remaining_issues');

                if ($remaining_issues == "") {  // we only want to update to the default 6 if this has not already been set
                  update_post_meta($post_id, '_remaining_issues', '6');
                }
            }
        }
    }

Answer 1

get_post_meta() without the third parameter will return an empty array if the key isn't found, so it looks like your check on $remaining_issues will fail every time.

Try

$remaining_issues = get_post_meta($post_id, '_remaining_issues',true);

if ($remaining_issues === false) {  // we only want to update to the default 6 if this has not already been set
              update_post_meta($post_id, '_remaining_issues', '6');
}