BuddyPress Edit activity function good practice

Question

I am using a custom BuddyPress edit function. However, I was told this is a bad practice and that I should use WordPress's helper function. How to correctly do this? Here, is the code:

add_action('wp_ajax_update_contest_entry', 'update_contest_entry');
add_action('wp_ajax_nopriv_update_contest_entry', 'update_contest_entry');

function update_contest_entry() {
  global $wpdb;
    $entry_id = isset($_POST['entry_id']) ? intval($_POST['entry_id']) : 0;
    $title = isset($_POST['title']) ? sanitize_text_field($_POST['title']) : '';
    $content = isset($_POST['body']) ? wp_kses_post($_POST['body']) : '';
    $signature = isset($_POST['signature']) ? sanitize_text_field($_POST['signature']) : '' ;
    $contentType = isset($_POST['contentType']) ? sanitize_text_field($_POST['contentType']) : '';

  if($contentType !== 'activity_comment'){
    $updated_activity = $wpdb->update(
      $wpdb->base_prefix . 'bp_activity',
      array(
          'content' => $content
      ),
      array('id' => $entry_id),
      array('%s'),
      array('%d')
    );
         $updated_meta = $wpdb->update(
          $wpdb->base_prefix . 'bp_activity_meta',
          array('meta_value' => $title),
          array('activity_id' => $entry_id, 'meta_key' => 'title'),
          array('%s'),
          array('%d', '%s')
      );

      $updated_meta_signature = $wpdb->update(
          $wpdb->base_prefix . 'bp_activity_meta',
          array('meta_value' => $signature),
          array('activity_id' => $entry_id, 'meta_key' => 'signature'),
          array('%s'),
          array('%d', '%s')
      );

      if ($updated_activity !== false && $updated_meta !== false && $updated_meta_signature !== false)  {
        wp_send_json_success('Contest entry updated successfully.');
    } else {
        wp_send_json_error('Error updating contest entry.');
    }
  }
  }

The feedback was that directly modifying the database is a bad practice. Use helper functions to update posts/meta in WordPress. But I didn't find any Buddypress/WordPress function to update activities.

Answer 1

Looking at https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/bp-activity/bp-activity-functions.php there's several functions:

Activity Meta

I found bp_activity_add_meta, bp_activity_delete_meta and bp_activity_update_meta in that file, e.g. bp_activity_update_meta:

        // Update activity meta counts.
        if ( bp_activity_update_meta( $activity_id, 'favorite_count', $fav_count ) ) {

Activities

It looks like these can be updated the same way wp_insert_post can be used to update a post, by calling bp_activity_add with the updated information, and giving it an ID of the activity you want it to update

Activity Comments

That file also includes all comment related functions, but it looks like bp_activity_new_comment works the same way as wp_insert_post in that you can modify a comment by passing its ID