[@rilliencot Participant 1 year ago]

Yep! Switching to the bbp_insert_topic function solved the issues I was having with various things not working correctly.

Thanks again for pointing out where all of that stuff was. I could tell my version was bad but it was the best I had been able to cobble together with my limited understanding. I was in one of those “too ignorant to even know what to look for” phases. I had a (genuinely) fun 4 hours this morning putting together how all of these plugins actually work. It would’ve been longer and frustrating trying to understand why my version wasn’t fully working without the guidance.

[@rilliencot Participant 1 year ago]

Although I solved the last issue, a similar one immediately came up after that (The topic count at the top of a forum didn’t count new topics). I had a feeling that as long as I proceeded with this hacked version of the actual bbPress functions that I now thankfully know are responsible for topic creation (thank you Robin, again!), these little discrepencies were going to keep popping up.

So I’ve updated the ‘create_bill’ function to now call bbp_insert_topic() (line 24 of \bbpress\includes\topics\functions.php). If I understand things correctly (I’m new to web development and learning as I go), this starts the natural chain of events that should happen anytime a new topic is created (at least it looks to be working). I still need the new endpoint because I’d like to add some custom fields to these topics as well, so now the above php script is the much simpler:

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Name:       bbPress Bill API
 * Description:       Exposing the bbPress post types to WP API and creating a namespace for bills.
 * Author:            Rillien Cot
 * Version:           1.6.0
 */

/**
 * Add REST API support to an already registered post type.
 */
add_action('init', 'register_bbp_post_types', 25);

function register_bbp_post_types() {
    global $wp_post_types;

    $post_type_name =  bbp_get_reply_post_type();
    if (isset($wp_post_types[$post_type_name])) {
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->show_in_rest = true;
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->rest_base = $post_type_name;
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->rest_controller_class = 'WP_REST_Posts_Controller';
    }
    $post_type_name =  bbp_get_topic_post_type();
    if (isset($wp_post_types[$post_type_name])) {
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->show_in_rest = true;
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->rest_base = $post_type_name;
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->rest_controller_class = 'WP_REST_Posts_Controller';
    }
    $post_type_name =  bbp_get_forum_post_type();
    if (isset($wp_post_types[$post_type_name])) {
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->show_in_rest = true;
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->rest_base = $post_type_name;
        $wp_post_types[$post_type_name]->rest_controller_class = 'WP_REST_Posts_Controller';
    }

    // Add custom REST API endpoint for creating bbPress topic
    add_action('rest_api_init', 'create_bill_endpoint');
}

function create_bill_endpoint() {
    register_rest_route('pnyx/v2', '/bill/', array(
        'methods' => 'POST',
        'callback' => 'create_bill',
    ));
}

function create_bill($data) {
    // Extract Data
    $new_topic_data = $data['new_post_data'];
    $new_topic_meta = $data['new_post_meta'];

    // Create new bbPress topic using passed data and meta content
    $topic_id = bbp_insert_topic($new_topic_data, $new_topic_meta);

    // Add ACF custom fields to created topic
    update_field('bill_id', $data['bill_id'], $topic_id);
}
?>

and the python that calls it is:

import requests
import json

# Set your WordPress API authentication details
username = "************"
password = "***********************"
auth = requests.auth.HTTPBasicAuth(username, password)

# Create a new post data with post_parent
new_post_payload = {
    "new_post_data": {
        "post_parent": 40, // use a valid forum_id from your site
        "post_title": "API Created Post Title",
        "post_content": "Lorem ipsum content for the new topic",
    },
    "new_post_meta": {
        "forum_id": 40, //use same forum_id here that you used for "post parent" in 'new_post_data'
    },
    "bill_id": "hrs1111",
}

# Make the POST request to create a new post
wordpress_api_url = "http://pnyx.local/wp-json/pnyx/v2/bill/"
response = requests.post(
    wordpress_api_url,
    auth=auth,
    headers={
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    },
    data=json.dumps(new_post_payload),
)

You’ll notice that the ‘data’ portion of the request has changed from a simple dictionary to nested dictionaries so the bbp_insert_topic function has the correct arguments (it takes two arrays).

[@rilliencot Participant 1 year ago]

Figured it out.

It was an issue with the post meta content. For topics to appear in forums, they apparently need to have a ‘_bbp_last_active_time’. I was able to add this by adding the line add_post_meta($topic_id, '_bbp_last_active_time', date('Y-m-d H:i:s')); right below the $topic_id = wp_insert_post($topic_args); line in the php file (with the date function getting the current datetime and returning it in the proper format).

[@rilliencot Participant 1 year ago]

I’m also discovering that the when I create a new topic via the standard route, the following post meta fields are generated in the wp_postMeta table for the topic:

edit_lock
edit_last
bbp_forum_id
bbp_author_ip
bbp_last_reply_id
bbp_last_active_id
bbp_last_active_time
bbp_reply_count
bbp_reply_count_hidden
bbp_voice_count

However, these do not get generated when I create a topic through my API. I have a feeling this is the issue. I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do about this though. I notice the bbp_forum_id field is included in there. Should I be using this to set that field instead of shoehorning through ‘post_parent’ in an additional plugin?