Network origin post update incorrectly updates published dates of distributed posts

[adamsilverstein]

Description

Under Distributor 1.2.3, using a network/multisite configuration we are noticing that updating an origin post changes the published dates on remote posts. We noticed this issue because any time an origin post was updated on our network, the destination posts got a new current time published date and jumped to the top of the home page river which shows the most recent posts first. This seems like unexpected/buggy behavior, is this expected?

Steps to reproduce

• Publish a post on site A
• Distribute the post to site B
• Edit the post on site B, changing the publication date to yesterday (this step is so you can see the bug, waiting some time also works)
• Edit the post on site A, make a small change and click update. Distributor updates the copy of the post on site B
• Edit the post on site B and note its "Published" date

Expected behavior

The destination post on site B should not have its published date changed - only the content should change when the original post is updated and it should stay in the same place in our reverse chronological post list.

Actual behavior

The destination post on site B had its published date updated to the time the update occurred (eg the current time), bring it to the top of our homepage.

Workaround

The following code will work around this issue using the dt_push_post_args filter - before pushing an update (the presence of the 'ID' field indicates this is an update) we pull the remote post's date and add that to the update arguments.

/**
 * When pushing posts, don't change the destination post date.
 */
function filter_dt_push_post( $post_body ) {
	if ( isset( $post_body['ID'] ) ) {
		$existing_date = date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s', get_post_time( 'U', false, (int) $post_body['ID'] ) );
		$post_body['post_date'] = $existing_date;
	}
	return $post_body;
}
add_filter( 'dt_push_post_args', __NAMESPACE__ . '\filter_dt_push_post', 10 );

[synthetiv]

I've also run into this issue recently, although in my experience it's not limited to updates.

For internal connections, post_date is preserved when pulling posts, but not when pushing; and although I haven't worked with external connections, looking at the code it seems like post_date would be ignored when pushing and when pulling. Indeed, WordPressExternalConnection::pull() explicitly calls unset( $post_array['post_date'] ) (and post_date_gmt, etc).

This is fairly easy to work around with a filter like the one above, but I think it would be great to have this as a plugin setting, like how we can choose to distribute all of a post's attachments or only the featured image. Changing a post's date to the date of distribution makes sense when the distribution is happening in real time (e.g. I write a post on one site and distribute it to another later that day), but I'm currently working on a site where we're distributing a bunch of months- or years-old content retroactively, and we'd like the distributed posts to stay in chronological order, show up under the correct year in archives, etc.

[jeffpaul]

@synthetiv thanks for confirming your use case and additional input on how we could better support your usage. We'll look at addressing this in an upcoming release (though not yet certain on the timing of when that will happen).

[Copylefter]

@synthetiv excuse me could you help me with this kind of filter you have described? How I could save the original post date when I pulling the post inside WPMU?

[Copylefter]

So, I modified @adamsilverstein 's function to get original post_date while pushing.
`
/**

• When pushing posts, get original date or don't change the destination post date.
  */
  function filter_dt_push_post( $post_body, $post) {

  if ( isset( $post_body['ID'] ) ) {
  $existing_date = date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s', get_post_time( 'U', false, (int) $post_body['ID'] ) );

   $post_body['post_date'] = $existing_date;
  

  } else {
  $original_date = $post->post_date;
  $post_body['post_date'] = $original_date;
  }
  return $post_body;
  return $post;

}
add_filter( 'dt_push_post_args', NAMESPACE . '\filter_dt_push_post', 10, 2 );
`