Editing serialized data WordPress dashboard - php

Question

I just inherited a custom plugin that takes Formstack submissions and creates WordPress posts from them. The posts are created fine, however the form contents are stored as serialized data in post_content.
I am tasked with enabling these posts to be edited within the WP Dashboard. Currently when you click on a post title, you are presented with a page that just shows the data; no capability to edit the data.
Enabling the editor controls within "supports" in the functions.php file gives me the editor with the serialized data just dumped in the editor.
I have never had to setup a custom edit page for a specific post type in WP. Is there someone out there who can direct me so a site that explains this? I'm running in circles.

Answer 1

You can filter the content before it is presented in the admin editing screen.
function my_filter_function_name( $content, $post_id ) {
if(get_post_type($post_id) == 'the_post_type_in_question'){
$serialized_content = $content;
$content_array = unserialize($serialized_content);
// do something with this array to put it in the format you want
// .....
$content = $new_formatted_content;
}
return $content;
}
add_filter( 'content_edit_pre', 'my_filter_function_name', 10, 2 );
But, that doesn't seem like it's going to be of much use to you.
In your situation, I suggest you take the time to write a script to convert all those posts so that everything is stored as post meta. (create the custom fields, first).
If your theme isn't built on any framework, then I think the quickest way to create a custom field is to use the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.
Then, once you know the meta_keys, you can write that script. E.g.
$posts = get_posts('post_type'=>'the_post_type','posts_per_page'=> -1);
foreach($posts as $post){
$content_array = unserialize($post->post_content);
// how you do the next bit will depend on whether or not this is an associative array. I'm going to assume it is (because it's a little easier :) )
foreach($content_array as $meta_key=>$meta_value){
update_post_meta($post->ID, $meta_key, $meta_value);
}
// just put what you actually want as the post content back into the post content:
wp_update_post(array('ID'=>$post->ID,'post_content'=>$content_array['post_content'])); // assuming the key of the element you want to be the post content is 'post_content'
}
To run this script, you could simply create a temporary new page and then create a template file specifically for that page and put the above code into that file (then visit the page).

Answer 2

You need to modify the plugin so that the data is unserialized before modifying, then serialized before saving to DB...
Alternatively, try using WP's CORE functionality:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/maybe_serialize
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/maybe_unserialize
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/is_serialized
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/is_serialized_string