Set expiration_date when status changes to open

Question

Users are able to submit an entry and it defaults to a status of 'Awaiting Moderation'. When our administrator reviews the entry and changes its status to 'Open', I would like to set the expiration date 60 days in the future.

In my extension, I've tried using the entry_submission_ready hook and the entry_submission_end hook, but I don't seem to be able to detect a difference in status.

public function set_expiration_date( $meta = array(), $data = array(), $auto_save = array() ) {

    $old_status = isset( $meta['status'] ) ? strtolower( $meta['status'] ) : '';
    $new_status = isset( $_POST['status'] ) ? strtolower( $_POST['status'] ) : '';

    if ( 'open' != $old_status && 'open' == $new_status && '14' == $data['channel_id'] && 'mydata' == $data['field_id_123'] ) {
        // set expiration date 60 days in the future
        $future = date('Y-m-d', time() + 60*24*60*60);
        $exp_time = strtotime(  $future . ' 23:59:59' );
        $data['expiration_date'] = $exp_time;
    } else {
        return;
    }
}

When using entry_submission_ready, $old_status and $new_status always seems to be the previous status. And with entry_submission_end, $old_status and $new_status are always the next status. So $_POST is changed.

I don't understand how to use this EE hook. What am I missing?

Answer 1

The extension hook entry_submission_ready is being called just prior to insertion / update so you should use this hook rather than entry_submission_end.

As you are calling this extension while an entry is being updated so you can get the Status of that entry using the SQL like:

$old_status = ee()->db->select('status')->where('entry_id', $data['entry_id'])->get('channel_titles')->row('status');

$new_status = $meta['status'];

You can do further processing as your code.

I hope, it would help you.