Documentation issue: get_post_time is getting the time when published not when created

[casiepa]

I'm having a doubt with ​https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_post_time/ (probably the same with ​https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_the_date/)
They both say 'Retrieve the date on which the post was written.', but from some programming I'm doing now it looks more like 'Retrieve the date on which the post was PUBLISHED.'.

Test: create a post in draft or pending and check that date using the function. (I'm doing it with a CPT)

[audrasjb]

Docs: Various date/time functions are returning the date/time the content was published, not written

[audrasjb]

Thanks for raising this issue Pascal!

I updated the following functions/hooks:

• the_date_xml
• the_date
• get_the_date
• get_the_modified_date
• the_time
• get_the_time
• get_post_time
• get_post_modified_time
• the_weekday
• the_weekday_date

[SergeyBiryukov]

This might need some further clarification, as it's not quite clear what "published" means for a draft or pending post.

In my testing:

• For a draft post that never was published, get_the_date() returns the date of the last edit.
• For a post that was previously published, get_the_date() returns the published date.

For both of these cases, the existing docs seem accurate. 51289.diff​ would only be accurate for the second case.

[Rarst]

The current wording is imperfect, but "was published" would imply a post is published. It might be not published. It might be scheduled for the future.

I think it should be neutral wording like "the date of the current post", which is already partially there. It just describes the return without implications about state of the post.

[helen]

I agree this can be worded as "the date of the post" for most of these, a few seem a little tricker (e.g. "The weekday name of the date of the post"?) but I'm confidence somebody with some wordsmithing skills can figure it out :) Punting out of 5.6 for now, strongly encourage some contributions here.

[desrosj]

This one hasn't seen any activity in this release cycle and still needs a patch refresh to address feedback. I'm going to punt, but if a committer has time to review, it can be moved back.

[desrosj]

Since this has not seen any activity during the 5.8 release cycle, I'm punting to Future Release. When a contributor is able to create a new patch, it can be moved back to a numbered milestone.

[azouamauriac]

I think this bug is deeper and more over a word issue. Since WordPress assumes that 'publish date' = 'write date' and save both data in 'post_modified' attribute. I don't think that way to see things is really right. A post can be written without published; so both dates should be handled by different properties.