I've written a PHP script to create custom posts programmatically from Google Calendar events, and an action hook that purges all existing events and repopulates it with current ones. This works fine when I click the button I've added to the views. However, when I try to excecute the hook as a cron job (using the WP Control plugin) it purges existing posts, but it does not create new ones. The only output I get from debugging is a warning about contextual_help being deprecated, which I don't think is relevant for this – but I could be wrong, of course.

Here's (the relevant parts of) the code:

function create_event_posts() {
  //calendar-ids and parameters are stored in variables outside of the function for reference in other functions
  global $calendarIds;
  global $optParams;

  //delete existing posts <-- This works fine! :)
  $allEvents = get_posts(array('post_type' => 'event', 'numberposts' => -1));
  foreach ($allEvents as $eachEvent) {
    wp_delete_post($eachEvent -> ID, true);
  }

  //call to google calendar script
  require_once ABSPATH . 'path/to/vendor/autoload.php';
  $client = new Google_Client();
  $client -> setApplicationName('customCalendar');
  $client -> setAuthConfig(ABSPATH . 'path/to/credentials.json');
  $client = getClient();
  $service = new Google_Service_Calendar($client);

  //collecting all the events
  foreach ($calendarIds as $calendarId) {
    $results = $service -> events -> listEvents($calendarId, $optParams);
    $events[] = $results -> getItems();
  }
  $events = flatten($events);

  foreach ($events as $event) {
    $eventContent = $eventTitle = $eventColor = $calendarTitle = '';
    $calendarTitle = $event -> organizer -> displayName;
    $eventContent = apply_filters('the_content', $event -> getDescription());
    $start = $event -> start -> dateTime;
    $end = $event -> end -> dateTime;
    $fmt = new \IntlDateFormatter('nb-NO', NULL, NULL);
    $fmt -> setPattern('EEEE d. MMMM');
    $outputDate = $fmt -> format(strtotime($start));
    $outputStart = date('H:i', strtotime($start));
    $outputEnd = date('H:i', strtotime($end));

    if (empty($start)) {
      $start = $event -> start -> date;
    }

    $eventPost = array(
      'post_author'   => 1,
      'post_date'     => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
      'post_content'  => $eventContent,
      'post_title'    => $eventTitle,
      'post_excerpt'  => $outputDate . ', kl. ' . $outputStart . ' – ' . $outputEnd,
      'post_status'   => 'publish',
      'post_type'     => 'event',
      'post_category' => array($eventCategory), //I cut out the part where this variable is defined, to save space
      'meta_input'    => array(
        '_EventStartDate'  => $start,
        '_Room'            => $calendarTitle,
      ),
    );
    if (!post_exists($eventTitle, $eventContent, '', 'event')) {
      $post_ID = wp_insert_post($eventPost);
    }
  }
}

And the hook is:

add_action('admin_post_create_event_posts', 'create_event_posts');

I've written a PHP script to create custom posts programmatically from Google Calendar events, and an action hook that purges all existing events and repopulates it with current ones. This works fine when I click the button I've added to the views. However, when I try to excecute the hook as a cron job (using the WP Control plugin) it purges existing posts, but it does not create new ones. The only output I get from debugging is a warning about contextual_help being deprecated, which I don't think is relevant for this – but I could be wrong, of course.

Here's (the relevant parts of) the code:

function create_event_posts() {
  //calendar-ids and parameters are stored in variables outside of the function for reference in other functions
  global $calendarIds;
  global $optParams;

  //delete existing posts <-- This works fine! :)
  $allEvents = get_posts(array('post_type' => 'event', 'numberposts' => -1));
  foreach ($allEvents as $eachEvent) {
    wp_delete_post($eachEvent -> ID, true);
  }

  //call to google calendar script
  require_once ABSPATH . 'path/to/vendor/autoload.php';
  $client = new Google_Client();
  $client -> setApplicationName('customCalendar');
  $client -> setAuthConfig(ABSPATH . 'path/to/credentials.json');
  $client = getClient();
  $service = new Google_Service_Calendar($client);

  //collecting all the events
  foreach ($calendarIds as $calendarId) {
    $results = $service -> events -> listEvents($calendarId, $optParams);
    $events[] = $results -> getItems();
  }
  $events = flatten($events);

  foreach ($events as $event) {
    $eventContent = $eventTitle = $eventColor = $calendarTitle = '';
    $calendarTitle = $event -> organizer -> displayName;
    $eventContent = apply_filters('the_content', $event -> getDescription());
    $start = $event -> start -> dateTime;
    $end = $event -> end -> dateTime;
    $fmt = new \IntlDateFormatter('nb-NO', NULL, NULL);
    $fmt -> setPattern('EEEE d. MMMM');
    $outputDate = $fmt -> format(strtotime($start));
    $outputStart = date('H:i', strtotime($start));
    $outputEnd = date('H:i', strtotime($end));

    if (empty($start)) {
      $start = $event -> start -> date;
    }

    $eventPost = array(
      'post_author'   => 1,
      'post_date'     => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
      'post_content'  => $eventContent,
      'post_title'    => $eventTitle,
      'post_excerpt'  => $outputDate . ', kl. ' . $outputStart . ' – ' . $outputEnd,
      'post_status'   => 'publish',
      'post_type'     => 'event',
      'post_category' => array($eventCategory), //I cut out the part where this variable is defined, to save space
      'meta_input'    => array(
        '_EventStartDate'  => $start,
        '_Room'            => $calendarTitle,
      ),
    );
    if (!post_exists($eventTitle, $eventContent, '', 'event')) {
      $post_ID = wp_insert_post($eventPost);
    }
  }
}

And the hook is:

add_action('admin_post_create_event_posts', 'create_event_posts');

• custom-post-types
• wp-insert-post
• cron

1 Answer 1

Ah, I solved it! The problem was that outside of the admin panel WP does not load wp-admin. The solution was to add

if (!is_admin()) {
  require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/post.php');
}

Now it works like a charm! :)