Unable to get posts to auto publish or auto update

[mfult825]

Description

We use a multisite with Distributor facilitating the publishing and distribution from a central site to remote sites. No content that is distributed is auto published or auto updated. Publishing to AN only works if you open the distributed post and manually save the post. Articles in queue seem to be aware when content has been updated (because the "update" link appears) but will not update. Everything has to be a manual action in either the article queue or in the post admin. Im just hoping to get an idea of why this is the case and how I can get auto publishing and updates to be effective/

[kevinfodness]

A few questions:

1. Can you tell whether Distributor is copying over all postmeta, including the Apple News postmeta? We've seen cases before where plugins that copy content (either on the same site or to another one) copy the Apple News postmeta for an article, and then it (incorrectly) links that article to the original one. If you can configure what data is synchronized when using Distributor to send posts to other sites, make sure that it doesn't sync the Apple News data (particularly things like article ID, publish status, etc, which are set by the Apple News API after publishing the article).
2. Are the sites you're using Distributor to copy to set to auto-publish and auto-update articles in Apple News?

It's possible that because of how Distributor works, the hooks to auto-publish or auto-update aren't being registered / firing on the destination sites. Having the answers to the questions above will help me know if that's the case or not.

Thanks!

[mfult825]

Thank you so much for the response!

Can you tell whether Distributor is copying over all postmeta, including the Apple News postmeta?

This is a very interesting question. The origin site does not have the Apple News plugin enabled so I imagine it is carry no post meta associated with AN over. Since only the receiving site is syndicating content to AN the plugin is only enabled there. I could see this being an issue. However, can I enable the plugin on a site that is effectively not configured to syndicate to AN at all?

Are the sites you're using Distributor to copy to set to auto-publish and auto-update articles in Apple News?

Indeed they are. The AN articles queue is fully recongnizing them as published and queuing them, just not auto-publishing or auto-updating any post changes through the REST-based publishing and updating of distributor. It all has to be manual through the post admin on the remote site. As soon as I hit save on the remote site, the auto-syndication actions kick in.

[kevinfodness]

1. If AN isn't enabled on the root site then this is a non-issue. Thanks for confirming.
2. Thanks for confirming.

Are the origin site and all of the destination sites part of the same multisite network? If so, you should be able to use the Internal method of distributing content rather than the External method, which may solve this problem for you.

I took a quick look at the Distributor code and the Publish to Apple News code, and it should work even with the External connection type, since it's pushing the post via the REST API and we are hooking into save methods used by the REST API to sync content to Apple.

Do you have the "asynchronously publish to Apple News" setting turned on? I'd recommend not having it turned on, so if it is on, turning it off might help.

[mfult825]

Hi @kevinfodness thanks for this insight. Yes the site is a multisite network so it is an internal connection. The async setting is turned off. So unfortunately no new clues here. Given the save hook post trigger you mention, this is quite puzzling.

[kevinfodness]

Actually, the internal connection can explain it. The internal connection uses the switch_to_blog function, which has some quirks to it, most notably that plugins that weren't initialized on the origin site won't be available when switching to the target site. A low-risk thing to test would be to enable the Publish to Apple News plugin on the root site, but don't configure it (don't give it any channel credentials) and see if that's enough to make it available on the other sites when distributing content to them. If that doesn't work, you could try switching it to an External connection (even though it's not actually an external site) because that should force the post to go through the full process of publication, including the Publish to Apple News hooks.

[psorensen]

Thanks for the help @kevinfodness. We handled this by programmatically publishing to AN via Distributor hooks. For anyone needing this functionality, here's what we did:

....
   /**
	 * Register the module with WordPress.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function register() {
		add_action( 'dt_push_network_post', array( $this, 'handle_distributed_post_apple_news' ), 10, 2 );
		add_action( 'future_to_publish', array( $this, 'handle_scheduled_post_apple_news' ), 10, 1 );
	}

	/**
	 * Handle Apple News syndication for distributed posts.
	 *
	 * This function is called when a post is distributed and ensures
	 * Apple News syndication happens for distributed posts.
	 * Handles both new posts and updates.
	 *
	 * @param int $new_post_id     The new post ID on the destination site.
	 * @param int $original_post_id The original post ID.
	 */
	public function handle_distributed_post_apple_news( $new_post_id, $original_post_id ) {

		if ( ! class_exists( 'Admin_Apple_Post_Sync' ) ) {
			return;
		}

		// Get the post object.
		$post = get_post( $new_post_id );
		if ( ! $post || 'publish' !== $post->post_status ) {
			return;
		}

		// Switch to destination blog to get proper Apple News settings.
		switch_to_blog( $destination_blog_id );

		$this->sync_post_to_apple_news( $new_post_id, $post );
	}

	/**
	 * Handle Apple News syndication for scheduled posts.
	 *
	 * This function is called when a scheduled post is published and ensures
	 * Apple News syndication happens for posts that were scheduled to publish.
	 *
	 * @param WP_Post $post The post object that was just published.
	 */
	public function handle_scheduled_post_apple_news( $post ) {
		// Reuse the existing distributed post logic since it has all the same checks.
		$this->handle_distributed_post_apple_news( $post->ID, 0 );
	}

	/**
	 * Sync a post to Apple News.
	 *
	 * @param int    $post_id The post ID to sync.
	 * @param object $post    The post object.
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function sync_post_to_apple_news( $post_id, $post ) {
		try {
			// Get Apple News settings for the destination site.
			$admin_settings = new \Admin_Apple_Settings();
			$settings       = $admin_settings->fetch_settings();

			// Create Apple News sync instance.
			$apple_sync = new \Admin_Apple_Post_Sync( $settings );

			// Trigger Apple News syndication (handles both new posts and updates).
			$apple_sync->do_publish( $post_id, $post );
		} catch ( \Exception $e ) {
			// Log error but don't break the distribution process.
			error_log( 'Apple News syndication failed for post ' . $post_id . ': ' . $e->getMessage() );
		} finally {
			// Always restore the original blog context.
			restore_current_blog();
		}
	}
....