Sync Wordpress and Discourse categories

[Evgeniy_Zubrilin]

Hey, could you help me how to sync Wordpress and Discourse categories?

E.g., when user on my website create new category, I want it to be created in Discourse, and both post and forum topic will have the same category.

[Genyus (Gary McPherson)]

This code isn’t fully tested and would need error handling/safety checks/logging for production use, but should get you started:

add_action( 'create_category', 'discourse_create_category', 10, 1 );
function discourse_create_category( $term_id ) {
	$category = get_term_by( 'id', $term_id, 'category' );
	$name = $category->name;
	$path = '/categories.json';
	// Use the WPDiscourse plugin to generate a new category
	new \WPDiscourse\Utilities\PublicPluginUtilities()->discourse_request(
		$path,
		[
			'method' => 'POST',
			'name'   => $name,
		]
	);
}

add_action( 'set_object_terms', 'discourse_set_object_terms', 10, 1 );
function discourse_set_object_terms( $object_id ) {
	if ( ! metadata_exists( 'post', $object_id, 'publish_to_discourse' ) ) {
		// Enable publishing in Discourse, during initial save only.
		update_post_meta( $object_id, 'publish_to_discourse', true );
		$discourse_publish_option = get_option( 'discourse_publish' );
		// set the Discourse category based on WP category
		if ( is_array( $discourse_publish_option ) && array_key_exists( 'publish-category', $discourse_publish_option ) ) {
			$categories_list = wp_get_post_categories( $object_id );
			update_post_meta( $object_id, 'publish_post_category', $categories_list[0]->name );
		}
	}
}

[Evgeniy_Zubrilin]

Hey, Gary, thank you for your answer!

Unfortunately I have an error “syntax error, unexpected ‘->’ (T_OBJECT_OPERATOR)” for the following line:

new \WPDiscourse\Utilities\PublicPluginUtilities()->discourse_request(

The PHP version is 7.4, it must work. I don’t have the idea about the reason error occurs.

[Genyus (Gary McPherson)]

I did say it was untested, right? I can’t offer you too much help with debugging right now, but here’s an updated version that should fix that issue as well as removing a redundant check in the second action:

add_action( 'create_category', 'discourse_create_category', 10, 1 );
function discourse_create_category( $term_id ) {
	$category = get_term_by( 'id', $term_id, 'category' );
	$name = $category->name;
	$path = '/categories.json';
	// Use the WPDiscourse plugin to generate a new category
	$utils = new \WPDiscourse\Utilities\PublicPluginUtilities();
	$utils->discourse_request(
		$path,
		[
			'method' => 'POST',
			'name'   => $name,
		]
	);
}

add_action( 'set_object_terms', 'discourse_set_object_terms', 10, 1 );
function discourse_set_object_terms( $object_id ) {
	if ( ! metadata_exists( 'post', $object_id, 'publish_to_discourse' ) ) {
		// Enable publishing in Discourse, during initial save only.
		update_post_meta( $object_id, 'publish_to_discourse', true );
		$discourse_publish_option = get_option( 'discourse_publish' );
		// set the Discourse category based on WP category
		if ( is_array( $discourse_publish_option ) ) {
			$categories_list = wp_get_post_categories( $object_id );
			update_post_meta( $object_id, 'publish_post_category', $categories_list[0]->name );
		}
	}
}

@Evgeniy_Zubrilin

The PHP version is 7.4

7.4 is only about three months away from EOL, so you should really start planning to upgrade your hosting environment, if you haven’t already

[Evgeniy_Zubrilin]

Yeah, you did But the fact that I am not well at coding makes me look everywhere for a solution. I haven’t found any freelancer yet, so I was hoping to make it work by myself or with your advice

Thank you again, I’ll check!