Custom post type save_post action not firing

Question

Sorry if this is already answered on here. I looked around and couldn't see any answers to my question so I thought I'd post my own.

I'm building a plugin for a client that gathers customer feedback on a recent project that has been completed.

The admin would use the system to send a "prompt" to the customer asking them for their feedback with a link to a form on the site.

I have created a custom post type called "customer_prompts" which only has a title field and a few custom fields which are stored in a custom database table, not post meta.

Below is my code for the save_post action. It seems that when I hit publish, it does not fire the save_post action and only saves the title value to wp_posts.

add_action('save_post', 'save_prompt');
function save_prompt($post_id){
$post = get_post($post_id);

    if ( defined( 'DOING_AUTOSAVE' ) && DOING_AUTOSAVE ) 
          return;

    if ( 'customer_prompt' == $_POST['post_type'] ) 
    {
        if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_page', $post_id ) )
            return;
    }
    else
    {
        if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_post', $post_id ) )
        return;
    }

    global $wpdb;

    $prompt_id = com_create_guid();
    $customer_feedback_name = $_POST['_sdg_customer_feedback_name'];
    $customer_feedback_email = $_POST['_sdg_customer_feedback_email'];
    $salesperson = $_POST['_sdg_salesperson'];

    $values = array(
        'id' => $prompt_id, 
        'sdg_customer_name' => $customer_feedback_name,
        'sdg_customer_email' => $customer_feedback_email,
        'sdg_salesperson' => $salesperson,
        'sdg_post_id' => $post->id
    );

    $insert = $wpdb->insert($table_name, $values);

    if($insert) {
        mail($customer_feedback_email, 'hello', 'hello');
    }

}

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I cannot work out what is going on here.

Thanks, Jamie.

Answer 1

The "save_post" action is only called when we actually changed something in the post page form. If we just press the update button, without changing anything, the "save_post" action is not called.

This is important if we are editing a custom post type where we had custom meta boxes. If we rely on the "save_post" action and only change stuff on our custom meta boxes, nothing will happen.

The solution is to use the "pre_post_update" action hook, instead of "save_post"

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/save_post-not-working-getting-called#post-2335557

Answer 2

edit Have you tried placing print_r('hello world'); die(); after function save_prompt($post_id){ to make sure the function actually does get picked up by the action hook? /edit

Several Issue could be in play:

1: Your global wpdb needs to be at the very top of your function, before all your if conditional statements.

2: Your $_POST variables should have conditionals of if(isset($_POST['food')) to check if the data being posted is actually being set before reaching your function, otherwise is may be causing a fatal error, causing the data not to be entered to the DB.

3: Try global $post at the top of the function, then you can call the post's variables such as $post->post_type as an object through the $post variable.

4: Add $wpdb->print_errors; die(); after $insert = $wpdb->insert($table_name, $values); incase your DB query is incorrect.

Hopefully one of those should fix your problem.

Answer 3

First off, I would suggest setting up your WordPress site to be easy to debug http://codex.wordpress.org/Debugging_in_WordPress

That way, it's easy to see stuff ;)

For action hook, I believe you need to hook it like this:

add_action('save_post', 'save_prompt', 10, 2);
function save_prompt( $post_id, $post ){
//do whatever
}

the save_post hook passes 2 arguments.

Answer 4

This happened to me. Turned out I had a page-template set (a post-meta value for _wp_page_template) to a template that no longer existed, after having switched themes. This bit of code in wp-includes/post.php:

if ( ! empty( $postarr['page_template'] ) ) {
    $post->page_template = $postarr['page_template'];
    $page_templates = wp_get_theme()->get_page_templates( $post );
    if ( 'default' != $postarr['page_template'] && ! isset( $page_templates[ $postarr['page_template'] ] ) ) {
        if ( $wp_error ) {
            return new WP_Error( 'invalid_page_template', __( 'Invalid page template.' ) );
        }
        ...

aborts before firing save_post.

Answer 5

i think the var_dump in add_action('save_post', callback function is not showing!

add

$fp = fopen('c:\data.txt', 'w');
fwrite($fp, print_r($post_id, true));
fclose($fp);

and check if 'data.txt' exists, yes it is true by save_post.

:)

Answer 6

I had this exact problem as well and thought I'd add to the potential answers, to help save someone some time. It was a very simple problem that took me days to identify (I'm' a little balder at the moment - and feel a bit silly)...

It turns out that a metabox form that was being generated contained a "action" field that was overwriting the "action" field of the WordPress generated form - the form was only being used on a custom post and thus the the wrong action was being passed to WordPress on POST to 'wp-admin/post.php' and it ended up being handled by the default handler (at the end of the switch statement).

Another side-effect was that on update or publish, WordPress redirected to the built-in post index, instead of right back to the edited post.

The solution was to remove the 'action' hidden form element for the metabox.

I hope this helps somebody out there...