Export only new entries since last export

Hi @shogathu,

Thank you for reaching out.

Your situation is highly specific, even though I can see why you’d want to use it. However, most people actually want the entire list every time. So I think the way you’ve handled this is fine. There is one thing I would change, and that is to use the existing gfexcel_event_download hook. This is actually fired just before the actual download. At that point you can store a timestamp for that specific form.

Then you can indeed use the gfexcel_output_search_criteria hook to exclude any entries before that timestamp.

This question has triggered us to include a timestamp for the latest download in the feed settings. Once this has been added, you can use that value instead of storing it yourself with the gfexcel_event_download hook. Here is a link to the Github issue, so that you may keep an eye on that: https://github.com/GravityKit/GravityExport-Lite/issues/194. Unfortunately I can’t provide you with an ETA on this.

Hope this helps you out for now.

Kind regards,

Doeke
GravityKit

Hello Doeke,

thanks for your quick response. Before I wrote the ticket I tested it with the gfexcel_event_download Action but for my case it won’t work because we use the premium version with different export filter feeds, and we have to trigger which feed was used and update a field in the entry, that this entry was downloaded. Your gfexcel_event_download action triggers right between the response but before get the entry list, so our field in the entry was update before the list with the search_creteria filter was created and the list was empty

But I thank you that you want to include the timestamp that will also help us.

Best regards

Torsten

• This reply was modified 10 months ago by Torsten H?ndler.

@shogathu You are right, I missed the part where the download event is triggered before the entries are retrieved. I’ll look into a better event, maybe just after the download has been rendered.

In either case, I have a (slightly inelegant) solution for you.

$is_download = false;

add_filter( 'gfexcel_event_download', function () use ( &$is_download ) {
	$is_download = true;
} );

add_filter( 'gfexcel_output_search_criteria', function ( $criteria, $form_id, $feed_id ) use ( &$is_download ) {
	if ( ! $is_download ) {
		return $criteria;
	}

	$feed = GFAPI::get_feed( $feed_id );
	if (
		$feed instanceof WP_Error
		|| ! ( $feed['is_active'] ?? 0 )
		|| ! $feed['meta']
	) {
		return $criteria;
	}

    $download_at  = $feed['meta']['custom-downloaded_at'] ?? 0;
	if ( $download_at > 0 ) {
		$criteria['start_date'] = wp_date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $download_at );
	}

	// Update feed for next download.
	$feed['meta']['custom-downloaded_at'] = wp_date( 'U' );

	GFAPI::update_feed( $feed_id, $feed['meta'], $form_id );

	return $criteria;
}, 10, 3 );

So the idea is that we store a custom-download_at value on the feed. This way it is scoped to the feed, and not the entire form. The gfexcel_download_event only records that we are currently working with a download (and no other reason to retrieve the entries). Then the gfexcel_output_search_criteria looks for this value. If we are downloading we see if we recorded a custom-download_at time, and use that as a start_date. After we updated the criteria, we also update that timestamp for the next download.

Please note we need the “pass-by-reference” &-sign before the $is_download to be able to track the changes of the value. Otherwise we would get a static value of false. And I’ve use custom-download_at because I think we will call the parameter download_at on our end once the time comes. So this will avoid issues when updating later on.

I hope this makes sense, and helps you out for now; so you can keep updating the plugins.

Kind regards,

Doeke