is_home is set to true even for cron jobs, which causes sticky posts to get prepended to all WP_Query results

[archon810]

Hi,

We just ran into a bug where sticky posts were prepended to the list of posts being processed by a WP cron job in a new WP_Query like this:

$query = new WP_Query([
        'post_status' => 'future',
        'date_query' => array(
            'before' => '- 1 minute'
        ),
        'numberposts' => -1
    ]);

To my surprise, once someone stickied a post, our function in the cron job started doing stuff to the stickied posts, even though it simply runs in WP cron and we're not on the homepage.

I then looked at the logic that determines if the sticky posts get prepended.

// Put sticky posts at the top of the posts array
$sticky_posts = get_option( 'sticky_posts' );
if ( $this->is_home && $page <= 1 && is_array( $sticky_posts ) && ! empty( $sticky_posts ) && ! $q['ignore_sticky_posts'] ) {

So this can only fire when is_home is true. But how can it be? We're running via WP cron.

Looking at that logic:

if ( ! ( $this->is_singular || $this->is_archive || $this->is_search || $this->is_feed || ( defined( 'REST_REQUEST' ) && REST_REQUEST ) || $this->is_trackback || $this->is_404 || $this->is_admin || $this->is_robots ) ) {
    $this->is_home = true;
}

Since none of these are set - we're in WP cron - is_home gets set to true. That doesn't seem right. Is this a sneaky bug or am I missing something? Shouldn't it also check if it's running in cron here and not set is_home if so?

[xParham]

Agreed, is_home being true in a CRON process does not seem right. We saw some weird behavior in our CRON tasks and realized it was due to some random sticky posts getting included in the query results, which is completely unexpected.

[xParham]

I also want to add that sticky posts are ignored when the query only asks for the ids, and that is another unexpected behavior. The fields parameter shouldn't affect whether sticky posts will be include or not. But perhaps this should be tracked as a separate bug.