Automattic / Automattic/VIP-Coding-Standards

New Sniff: wp_get_post_revisions memory issues

Open
#468 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Standard: VIP-Go Type: Enhancement
Dominant language
PHP
Stars
261
Forks
44
Avg merge
19m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Description

## What problem would the enhancement address for VIP?
`wp_get_post_revisions` can be problematic because it loads the entire post object for each revision. I've seen this in CLI commands and other places, where you might be looping through a set of posts, and then suddenly have to load the entire post objects for every revision a post has. If those revisions are large and numerous - it quickly fails.

Related trac: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/34560

## Describe the solution you'd like
We should suggest they only get the IDs for the revisions instead of the whole object:

```
wp_get_post_revisions( $post->ID, array( 'fields' => 'ids' ) );
```

## What code should be reported as a violation?

Anything that doesn't have the fields argument, like:

```
wp_get_post_revisions( $post->ID );
```

## What code should *not* be reported as a violation?

Getting the `ids` field or other fields instead of the whole object.
```
wp_get_post_revisions( $post->ID, array( 'fields' => 'ids' ) );
```

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the issue's violating and allowed wp_get_post_revisions examples and the linked WordPress Trac ticket. Done means calls without a fields argument are reported, while calls requesting ids or another fields value are not.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
php
Domain
performance, tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
38/100

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