transition_post_status hook does not fire when cron publishes scheduled post.

[tele2rn]

Ever since the most recent 6.1 update, a critical hook of ours is not firing any more.

We have a custom cache clearing plugin that clears the nginx, redis and Cloudflare cache for a bunch of our landing pages. It runs on our site when a post's status changes from from 'future' to 'publish', from 'publish' to 'trash' or when a post is originally published of updated. We use the transition_post_status hook to trigger these cache clears.

Everything was working great until the 6.1/6.1.1 updates. After the wp 6.1 update, the manual publish/update operations done directly using the wp-admin work fine, but when our cron runs to publish a scheduled post the transition_post_status hook does not fire at all.

But here is the most curious thing... the "publish_future_post" cron job is not created when we schedule a post for the future. The function check_and_publish_future_post() uses this cron job to decide what posts need to be published, but the cron job never appears in my action scheduler or in my events tab of the wp-control plugin. So that mean that the wp_publish_post() function does not run, and the filter hooks don't fire. But the post DOES publishes as expected on the wp-cron. It is beyond weird, and i cant figure it out.

Here is what I have done and tested thus far:

I have tested all of the following hooks: none of them work either:

• transition_post_status
• future_to_publish
• future_post

I am using a manual cron fired from my ubuntu server, and I have confirmed my cron is firing using an output.log, and I can also confirm that other wp-cron jobs are running as as normal.

I have tried both a conventional wget 'doing_wp_cron' and a wp-cli cron jobs, and both fail (see examples below):

• * * * * * wget -q -O - --no-check-certificate ​https://domain.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1
• * * * * * cd /path/to/www; /usr/local/bin/wp cron event run --due-now >/dev/null 2>&1

In order to get back to where we were, I have had to spin up my own cron that publishes future posts myself, so I have solved this issue on my end, but I cannot be the only one experiencing this, so I thought that I would submit this information for your review, thanks!

[peterwilsoncc]

Hi @tele2rn and welcome to trac!

I created a ​mini-plugin to test this issue and have not been able to reproduce the issue.

Running this plugin produced the expected log entries when the post was published as scheduled

[31-Jan-2023 00:40:01 UTC] PHP Notice:  transition_post_status in /vagrant/content/mu-plugins/nope-scheduled-post.php on line 5
[31-Jan-2023 00:40:01 UTC] PHP Notice:  future_to_publish in /vagrant/content/mu-plugins/nope-scheduled-post.php on line 6

Saving a scheduled post also produced the expected entries

[31-Jan-2023 00:46:37 UTC] PHP Notice:  transition_post_status in /vagrant/content/mu-plugins/nope-scheduled-post.php on line 5
[31-Jan-2023 00:46:37 UTC] PHP Notice:  future_post in /vagrant/content/mu-plugins/nope-scheduled-post.php on line 7

Are you able to reproduce the issue on a WordPress install running a default theme with only the test plugin installed?

[tele2rn]

Thanks Peter, for your prompt reply.

I have installed your plugin on my local site and it did not work just like my other action hooks. I then installed your plugin on a vanilla install of wp running only 2021 theme..., and your plugin did trigger the error on that site.

So I have to assume that it is a plugin or theme code conflict causing this issue. Do you have any idea what would cause a this to happen. Another action filter on the same hook? what do you think? Thanks!

[callumbw95]

Hi @tele2rn,

I know this has been sitting for a while, but did you manage to resolve this issue?
Unfortunately without visibility to the code present on your site it is going to be hard to determine what is causing this issue. However a plugin or theme conflict is the most likely cause here.

As this issue is not related to core, and the ticket has been sitting for 3 years, I am going to mark this with the close tag. However if there is anything else please do feel free to comment or open a new ticket. 😃