[wp-hackers] Deleting a lot of posts/terms on plugin deactivation

[Matthias Breuer]

I think the best way is using AJAX to delete the posts in batches. A bonus for this method is, that the user has visual feedback about the process. Much better than waiting for a page refresh that might not even happen.

Best,
Matthias

Am 28.06.2013 um 11:07 schrieb Nikola Nikolov <nikolov.tmw at gmail.com>:

> It should be a one-time operation indeed, but the question is how would I
> use the command-line from inside PHP itself - the idea is that (for
> instance)the user would go to a page and click a button that will then
> trigger the uninstall process.
> 
> It should work on various set-ups and in some cases(well maybe most, I'm
> not sure), you won't be able to execute CLI commands from PHP itself, since
> that will be disabled.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Mo Braga <Mo.Braga at lbi.com> wrote:
> 
>> If this is a one-off operation, use php directly, from the command line:
>> 
>> php <your-bulk-delete-program>.php
>> 
>> You may need to load WordPress in your program.  For an example, see
>> wp-cron.php
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: wp-hackers [mailto:wp-hackers-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On
>> Behalf Of Nikola Nikolov
>> Sent: 28 June 2013 09:29
>> To: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
>> Subject: [wp-hackers] Deleting a lot of posts/terms on plugin deactivation
>> 
>> Hello everyone,
>> 
>> I'm currently working on a (yet-another)multilingual plugin for WordPress.
>> I'm willing to add an uninstall functionality that would allow the user to
>> remove all data created by the plugin(so any options, custom meta, posts,
>> terms, etc). The plugin works by creating a duplicate post/term in a custom
>> post type/taxonomy for each enabled language.
>> 
>> I've noticed that when I have for instance 7 enabled languages and I want
>> to delete a bunch of posts, my WAMP installation would time-out at 60
>> seconds if I try to delete more than probably 10 posts, since I hook to the
>> delete_post hook and use wp_delete_post to remove the corresponding
>> translation posts - which means, that wp_delete_post is actually called for
>> up to 80 posts.
>> 
>> I realize that wp_delete_post is generally a heavy function, since deletes
>> all post meta, comments(?), etc.
>> 
>> What I'm wondering is whether I should use wp_delete_post or if there
>> would be a different approach to deleting multiple files with less load on
>> the server. Obviously if I stick to wp_delete_post(), I would use
>> ajax-driven uninstall process which would only delete a handful of posts at
>> a time.
>> 
>> I assume one way to beat the timeout would be to try to use
>> set_time_limit() whenever I delete translation posts, but obviously I
>> can't use this solution for plugin uninstallation, since there could be a
>> lot of data(let's say a thousands-of-posts situation).
>> 
>> ----
>> 
>> Nikola Nikolov
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