WordPress plugin executing code twice

Question

WordPress plugin executing code twice

Cute Khan

2022年5月13日 10:38

I am building a WordPress plugin and am stuck on an unexpected problem where my plugin code is running twice.

Please see my plugin code:

/* Plugin Name: plugin name
Plugin URI: 
Description: Descript
Version: 1.0
Author: Author
Author URI: 
License: GPLv2 or later
*/

if ( ! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) ) { 
    exit; // Exit if accessed directly
}
  
require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . '/lib/visit_stats.php');

Here is my visit_stats.php code:

// Current wordpress user id
$userid = 3;

// Getting visit value from user meta
$oldvisitdata = get_user_meta($userid, visits, true);

// For example, if it's returning 3

// Now increasing the old visits value by 1
$newvisit = $oldvisitdata + 1;

// Now update the meta
update_user_meta($userid, 'visits', $newvisit);

When we retrieve the value, it should be 4, but instead, it's 5, which means when I +1, it's adding 2 to the old value. I think it's only because the script is running twice.

I did a test to confirm it, so here is the output of the time: date=12:36:34 am date=12:36:41am. When I open my website, my plugin should execute the code only once, but it's doing it twice, as there is a difference of 7 sec. My code is running twice in the interval of 7 sec.

I do not understand why this is happening.

Topic plugins Wordpress

Category Web

circularsoggy · Accepted Answer · 2018年5月25日 11:03

Otto's answer is great, but I just wanted to add some additional information. Try looking at the request URI by looking at the following variable:

$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']

This will let you figure out whether the user's browser is issuing another request that is causing wordpress to be run again.

In my case, this problem was due to a request for the .css.map file that was included in the SASS output css files triggering apache to re-run wordpress!

Otto · Accepted Answer · 2014年12月10日 06:20

Quite simply, it's loading more than once because you're probably actually making more than one HTTP request to "WordPress".

You should not do anything like counting on a plugin load like this, because WordPress can load in many different situations, sometimes more than once for even a single page view.

The wp-cron process, for example, can run in the background on another request in order to handle things like scheduled posts, update checks, trash cleanup, and other such mundane tasks. Those HTTP requests do indeed load plugins, so that plugins can do things when the wp-cron process is called.

Elements of the main Dashboard, such as the "WordPress News", are shown using Javascript. These are separate requests in the backend to the admin-ajax routines, which load WordPress in order to access the HTTP functions, and then to retrieve data from the WordPress.org RSS feeds. These load most of WordPress, plugins included.

So what you're counting is not so much a "visit" counter as it is a "hit" counter, and one visit can be more than one hit. If you actually want to count visits, you should count much more selectively, ignoring things like background requests.

When a cron process is running, DOING_CRON will be defined.
When an AJAX request is running, DOING_AJAX will be defined if it's going through the admin-ajax system. However, note that many plugins and themes use their own system of callbacks to WordPress, and may not be easily recognizable like this.

So, you can ignore those hits in your counter. But realistically, you're still going to get "false" count increases from other plugins and themes. So you should instead change your counting method to not count on plugin load, but instead to count on specific WordPress action hooks that you're wanting to monitor.

WordPress plugin executing code twice

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