In PublishPress Future Pro it is possible to schedule changes to your posts based on metadata. For example, you can create a date field in the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, and use that to control the date for Future Actions.
By default, Future does not utilize post metadata for scheduling actions. Instead, it employs the dedicated custom table <prefix>ppfuture_actions_args. This table is connected to the Action Scheduler library for managing scheduling tasks.
With PublishPress Future Pro, it is possible to bypass the ppfuture_actions_args table and use metadata to schedule Future Actions.
Activation and Triggering #
The Metadata Scheduling feature listens to the save_post action and specific metadata to configure the post's action scheduling.
An alternative way to trigger the processing of metadata for scheduling is using the action publishpressfuturepro_process_metadata, passing the post ID as the first argument. Optionally, you can also pass instance of WP_Post as the second argument.
Conditions for Scheduling #
The plugin checks if there is a timestamp in the metadata _expiration-date and if _expiration-date-status is equal to “saved” or “1”. If so, a hash is calculated based on the future action metadata and compared with the value found in the metadata pp_future_metadata_hash. If different, or not existent, the scheduling continues. A different hash means the scheduling data has changed or the action has been already scheduled with different settings.
If the post already has a future action scheduled it cancels it and re-schedule with the new settings.
Cleanup #
After a future action is unscheduled or executed, the related metadata, including the hash, is deleted.