wp_trash_post() ignores errors from wp_update_post()

[siliconforks]

The documentation for wp_trash_post() states that it returns "false or null on failure". It does indeed do that for some failure conditions, but it calls wp_update_post() without checking its return value, so it just ignores any errors which occur there.

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/5.2.2/src/wp-includes/post.php?rev=45549#L2985

One of the consequences of this is that, in the admin section, if a user trashes a post and the wp_update_post() call fails for some reason, the success message "1 post moved to the Trash" will be displayed even though the post did not actually get moved to the trash.

[abhijitrakas]

Add check for post status update failure

[manzoorwani.jk]

@abhijitrakas You could simply pass the second argument as false to wp_update_post to make it not return WP_Error and then check only for the false value, like this

<?php
$post_updated = wp_update_post(
        array(
                'ID'          => $post_id,
                'post_status' => 'trash',
        ),
        false
);
// Check if post was not updated.
if ( ! $post_updated ) {
        return false;
}

Also, there is wp_trash_post_comments which could also fail.

[abhijitrakas]

Modify code to detect false value on post update

[abhijitrakas]

@manzoorwanijk No need to pass the second parameter as it's the default param in wp_update_post function.

For wp_trash_post_comments we can't stop the process. If we return false on fail of wp_trash_post_comments function, then the user might get confused as we return an error but the post is not there in the list as post status already changed.

[SergeyBiryukov]

In 45724:

Posts, Post Types: Check the result of wp_update_post() in wp_trash_post() and wp_untrash_post().

Props abhijitrakas, manzoorwani.jk, siliconforks.
Fixes #47773.