I have a PHP script that connects to a third-party application, retrieves data, and then inserts it into WordPress using wp_insert_post()
. The data also has a custom taxonomy associated with it, which is being passed into the wp_insert_post()
function via the $args
array. Lastly, the script executes every hour via a cron job.
Here is the WordPress insert:
$args = array(
'comment_status' => 'closed',
'ping_status' => 'closed',
'post_author' => 1,
'post_content' => $content,
'post_status' => 'publish',
'post_title' => $title,
'post_type' => 'movie',
'tax_input' => array(
'genre' => array('term1', 'term2', 'term3')
)
);
$wp_movie_id = wp_insert_post($args);
And here the cron job:
@hourly /usr/bin/curl --silent http://example.com/cron.php
The problem was that every time the cron job ran, my custom taxonomy terms were missing, while everything else inserted just fine.
Whenever I executed the script manually from my browser though, the taxonomy terms were present, so I was sure that it was related to the cron job.
Turns out, the problem was within the wp_insert_post()
function. Prior to inserting the taxonomy terms, WordPress checks whether that user has permission via current_user_can()
:
if(!empty($tax_input)) {
foreach($tax_input as $taxonomy => $tags) {
$taxonomy_obj = get_taxonomy($taxonomy);
if(is_array($tags)) {
$tags = array_filter($tags);
}
if(current_user_can($taxonomy_obj->cap->assign_terms)) {
wp_set_post_terms($post_ID, $tags, $taxonomy);
}
}
The cron job didn’t have authority to insert taxonomy terms. This also explains why it always worked in my browser, because I was logged in as an admin in the background.
Luckily there is a quick solution that solves this problem. Instead of inserting the taxonomy terms using the $args
array, you can use another WordPress function called wp_set_object_terms()
to perform the insert separately:
$terms = array('term1', 'term2', 'term3');
wp_set_object_terms($wp_movie_id, $terms, 'genre');
Hopefully this will save someone a couple hours of research!