Prevent exception when no author

[shaunjeffrey]

An additional check for when $author is false should be added to wp-admin/includes/media.php:3291 in order to prevent an exception from being thrown.

One example is when images are added to the media library via an import script. If the author is not defined, then an exception will be thrown when attempting to edit the media post, as you cannot call the method exists on a non-object.

The easiest way to get around this issue is to simply check to ensure that $author is not empty.

# wp-admin/includes/media.php:3291 - Change the conditional to include a check for $author.
if ( $author && $author->exists() ) {

​https://github.com/shaunjc/WordPress/commit/d939e85767f51f4b13c4ae7c6385d57ce8ab6fa9
​https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/pull/507

Additional check for when $author is false to prevent an exception from being thrown.

One example is when images are added to the media library via an import script. If the author is not defined, then an exception will be thrown when attempting to edit the media post, as you cannot call the method exists on a non-object.

The easiest way to get around this issue is to simply check to ensure that $author is not empty.

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/52145

[SergeyBiryukov]

Hi there, welcome to WordPress Trac!

Thanks for the report, we're already tracking this issue in #52030.

[shaunjeffrey]

Hi Sergey, that's good to know because I couldn't find any other tickets.

I'm a little surprised that the issue wasn't picked up by the automated tests two months ago when the change to the wp-admin/includes/media.php file were made.

The solution is ridiculously simple, so hopefully it doesn't take too long to be implemented.

Closing as the associated ticket has been closed as a dupe of https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/52030 which has a patch.