Page Restore Autosave Not Working

[jawad96]

Hi there,

Restoring from Autosave on Pages is not working and I have similar symptoms to these users: ​https://wordpress.org/support/topic/restore-autosave-not-working?replies=3

Hence I think it may be a bug as other users are encountering similar problems.

Steps to reproduce:

1) Edit a published page

2) Let it autosave and exit the page without updating page.

3) Re-edit same page again and it will have the notification at the top: "There is an autosave of this post that is more recent than the version below. View the autosave"

4) Click on 'View the Autosave' link and then choose 'Restore This Autosave'

5) This causes the page to refresh/reload onto the 'Pages' menu.

6) If you check the page you attempted to restore from it has not been modified to reflect the restored autosave (i.e. it did not work restoring the page)

Please confirm if you can replicate and it is a bug or not?

Many Thank,
Jawad

[adamsilverstein]

@jawad96

Thanks for the bug report. I tested in trunk and was unable to reproduce this bug (I haven't tried 4.4.2)

I created and published a page, then made some changes which were autosaved. I left and revisited the page, followed the 'unsaved changes' warning link and clicked to restore the autosave. My autosaved changes where restored after clicking the 'Restore this Autosave' button.

Can you please try to see if this issue is reproducible with the default theme active and all plugins disabled?

Thanks.

[jawad96]

@adamsilverstein

Sorry for the late reply. I have been very ill the past week and slowly getting on top of things. I have managed to replicate this issue again. Please add

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );

to your wp-config.php. Of course this code is used to prevent Wordpress from creating revisions. But it seems to have an adverse affect on the autosave.

Many Thanks,
Jawad

[adamsilverstein]

Ok, I will test again with revisions disabled this way, thanks for clearing that up. Be well!

[jawad96]

Replying to adamsilverstein:

Ok, I will test again with revisions disabled this way, thanks for clearing that up. Be well!

Cool, thanks. Let me know if you can also replicate on your end.

[jawad96]

Hello @adamsilverstein

Were you able to test this yet?

Many Thanks,
Jawad

[jawad96]

Hi @adamsilverstein ,

Any update on this request please? Were you able to replicate?

Many Thanks,
Jawad

[adamsilverstein]

@jawad96 Sorry I have been occupied with other things, getting back to revisions/autosave next week and will update here with what I find.

[jawad96]

Hey @adamsilverstein ,

Not to worry! Have you managed to test this yet? Interested to see if you are able to replicate.

Many Thanks,
Jawad

[adamsilverstein]

@jawad96 I was able to test this and confirm it is a bug, I am digging into why the autosave is not being restored. I do see it is being saved correctly, the restore process seems broken.

Thanks for the bug report!

[adamsilverstein]

I checked and this appears broken back at least as far as vs. 3.6, I see the same issue in that version.

[adamsilverstein]

@jawad96 Thanks again for the bug report.

I tracked this down to a flaw in the logic applied when restoring a revision. The code checks to make sure the revision you are attempting to restore is valid, and one check is for the 'WP_POST_REVISIONS' setting. Previously the code here allowed autosaves to be restored, but at some point in the past this logic was changed and autosaves were excluded - thus breaking the restore entirely if revisions are disabled (as you reported). I think we removed this because the use case you describe wasn't caught.

Fortunately, when we changed this, we left a comment in the code: Revisions disabled (previously checked autosaves && ! wp_is_post_autosave( $revision )) that made it pretty straightforward how to re-introduce the autosave check to the restore.

Can you test the attached patch to verify it resolves the issue for you? I tested on my end and the restore of my autosave now works properly with define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );

In 36262.diff​:
Allow autosaves to be restored when revisions are disabled.

• fixes the restore logic to allow restoring autosaves

I took some screencasts to visually record the issue:

Before patch:
​http://cl.ly/3M1W3l1d0L1g

After patch:
​http://cl.ly/0p0C120m1N44

[lukecavanagh]

I was able to test on a local truck version and it does look like a bug. The restored changes do show in the main editor, so when you do save the page. The restored auto save will be reflected back on the front-end.

[ocean90]

In 38009:

Revisions: Allow autosaves to be restored when revisions are disabled.

Fixes bug introduced in [23639] where autosaves are not restored if revisions are disabled.

Props adamsilverstein.
Fixes #36262.