Bulk edits don't update "last edited by..." which user

[calebwoodbridge]

On a multi-author site, I made some bulk edits to some posts' categories. These posts were previously created and last updated by other users.

In the editor for the individual posts, it now says "Last updated by [previous user] on [date and time I made the changes]", which is incorrect. It looks like the bulk editor doesn't update which user last edited a post, though it does update the last modified time.

I would expect it to say "Last updated by [my username]..." - which is what it does if I quick edit an individual post, or change the categories on the full post edit page.

I've found the same behaviour on two different sites, and both on standard pages and categories, and on a custom post type and custom taxonomy.

[peterwilsoncc]

Hello and a belated welcome to trac!

I'm sorry it's take a while for you to hear back but ​this ticket was discussed earlier today in a triage session.

During the triage session we were able to reproduce the bug and narrow down the cause: the function bulk_edit_posts() is used for bulk updates but fails to update the meta data to indicate who last modified the post.

To resolve this technically, the following code needs to be run for each post that is updated: update_post_meta( $post_ID, '_edit_last', get_current_user_id() );

I've moved this to the Posts component and made a few other administrative changes.

Thanks for your patience.

[guillaumeturpin]

HI @peterwilsoncc

I will check this out

[audrasjb]

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

[guillaumeturpin]

Update post with bulk edit now update the edit last user

[audrasjb]

Thanks for the quick patch @guillaumeturpin!

$post_id = wp_update_post( $post_data );
if ( update_post_meta( $post_id, '_edit_last', get_current_user_id() ) ) {
    $updated[] = $post_id;
}

Just wondering if we really need/want to place $updated[] = $post_id; within a conditional statement.

Maybe the code below would be enough and more straightforward?

$updated[] = $post_id = wp_update_post( $post_data );
update_post_meta( $post_id, '_edit_last', get_current_user_id() ) );

By the way, the patch works fine on my side.

[guillaumeturpin]

Removed the conditional statement, and wrapped your solution into 3 lines for readability

[audrasjb]

Looks good to me, thanks!

Let's move this ticket for 5.9 consideration.

[audrasjb]

The patch still applies cleanly against trunk and fixes the issue.
Marking for commit consideration.

[davidbaumwald]

In 52141:

Posts, Post Types: Update _edit_last meta when posts are edited in bulk.

When posts are edited in bulk, the _edit_last meta was not updated for each post. This change adds a call to update the _edit_last meta to the current user ID for each post the is updated.

Props calebwoodbridge, peterwilsoncc, guillaumeturpin, audrasjb.
Fixes #42446.