Update Pingback function To Add Return

[dshanske]

Related to #36824.

Updated to reflect focus on the return issue.

In #36824, the proposal was to improve performance of the do_all_pings function. Part of this involves the fact that if a pending trackback URL is sent a pingback successfully, it should not also send a trackback.

The function should also optionally return which URLs were successfully pinged or a WP_Error object in the event the sending fails, etc.

This would change the signature of the function but would allow for debugging, response to errors, as well as assist in optimizing the do_all_pings function.

The original proposal was to deprecate pingback because it includes $content, a parameter better retrieved from the post itself for purposes of integrity. However, that can be addressed in other ways.

[shulard]

Hello !

I'm actually trying to make a patch for that ticket, but can't find a clean way to handle this. The pingback function can ping multiple URLs in one call, how the return value can be consistent with that :

• Always return an array of found URL as key and true / WP_Error if URL was pinged successfully or not ?
• Return an array of pinged URL or a WP_Error if at leat one failed ?

[dshanske]

You are right, handling this is difficult.

My suggestion is to start by splitting the code that sends a single ping based on a URL into a new function with a return. This will get a single true/false to build an array. We can also add split the function to find the content in a content block.

That would allow the existing function to call them but future changes in do_all_pings to call each piece independently.

In the meantime, pingback can return true if all successful, which should shutdown Trackbacks for the post_id.

[NathanAtmoz]

The patch attached returns an array with the $pagelinkedto as the key and the result of WP_HTTP_IXR_Client::query() as the key. Not sure if this is a sufficient solution for your needs.

[dshanske]

Needs a second opinion, but I think this is acceptable.

[jbpaul17]

Punting this to Future Release per the 4.9 bug scrub earlier today.

[DrewAPicture]

Assigning to mark the good-first-bug as "claimed".

@dshanske Can you please have a look a the patch and provide any feedback @NathanAtmoz might need to keep this ticket moving?

[dshanske]

@DrewAPicture I do not see anything wrong with the patch. I asked for a second opinion at the time. It returns an array of statuses, so someone can evaluate whether there was an issue with any of them.

[dshanske]

#41842 was marked as a duplicate.

[ocean90]

The change needs to be ​documented in the function's DocBlock.

[audrasjb]

Bumping to 4.9.6 due to 4.9.5 beta release.

[soulseekah]

refresh + docblock

[desrosj]

I am inclined to punt this to 5.0 because the function signature is changing.

[dshanske]

@desrosj I don't think the signature has changed. The arguments passed are the same. There was no return, now there is.

I think if functionality changes in a non-backward compatible way, that is a signature change. If you add a parameter or return one, the original signature is still maintained.

[soulseekah]

It used to return null which is falsey, now it returns an array which truthy. I'd err on the safe side as well.

[desrosj]

I am going to move this to 5.0 because of the potential for issues with the change in returned values. If a committer is confident in this, it can be moved back in.

[pento]

It seems like it would be more useful for the array elements to be true or a WP_Error, with the error extracted from $client->error.

Also, $ping_status doesn't contain an error if discover_pingback_server_uri() is unable to discover the URI.