Plugin Stopped Working After Update

Hi

Which update are you referring to? An update to WordPress, WooCommerce or to our plugin?

Your last comment about old links working makes me think that something changed with how WordPress or WooCommerce handle saving links…

Thanks
Eric

Hi Eric,

I can’t be certain.

I suspect it was the last WordPress update, as I updated both around the same time.

Cheers

Josh

Hi

It seems the issue is with how WooCommerce encodes the URL before it is saved to the database.

Here’s the URL I entered into an External product’s Product URL field (without https://www.):

shareasale.com/r.cfm?B=713139&U=1693&M=58539&urllink=

And here is the value stored in the database:

shareasale.com/r.cfm?B=713139&U=1693&M=58539&urllink=

I added this code to a custom plugin and it fixed the issue:

/**
 * Fix encoded ampersands.
 *
 * WooCommerce was saving & as &. This code
 * converts the encoded ampersands back to a regular ampersand.
 */
add_filter( 'wccal_filter_url', 'mycode_decode_ampersand', 20, 2 );
function mycode_decode_ampersand( $external_link, $post_id ) {
	$external_link = html_entity_decode( $external_link, ENT_QUOTES | ENT_HTML5 );

	return $external_link;
}

Here’s how to create a custom plugin: https://datafeedrapi.helpscoutdocs.com/article/32-creating-your-own-custom-plugin

Hope this helps!

Eric

Ugh! This site keeps converting my characters. I’ll post one more time adding spaces to the characters.

Basically, WooCommerce is converting & into & # 0 3 8 ; before saving to the database.