Something I get asked a fair bit with regards to my plugins is how to send an alert during an event, for example, “when a job expires in WP Job Manager, how can I notify the user?”
Plugins which use custom post types, like WP Job Manager, are likely to use custom/standard post statuses too – it’s pretty common. Using these statuses you can easily hook-in a custom function and trigger and email.
This is a quick tutorial for hooking into a status change and sending an email for WP Job Manager.
Create a custom plugin, open up functions.php, or create a drop in
You need to place your code somewhere. I’d recommend a plugin or drop in to keep your code upgrade-safe, but you can also use the theme functions.php file. You can read about making plugins in the codex – I’ll focus on the code itself rather than this aspect.
Let’s create a class to house our functionality:
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| class My_Job_Manager_Custom_Alerts { | |
| /** | |
| * Constructor | |
| */ | |
| public function __construct() { | |
| } | |
| } |
Find out the status you wish to act upon and hook into it
Job Manager uses WP core statuses plus 1 custom one called ‘expired’ (which is registered using the register_post_status function).
Generally, the flow goes something like:
- Draft (draft)
- Pending (pending)
- Published (publish)
- Expired (expired)
In this example we want to send an alert out when a published job expires, so the post status transition hook will be called publish_to_expired. WordPress automatically triggers this hook when necessary.
The hook/code will look like this:
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| class My_Job_Manager_Custom_Alerts { | |
| /** | |
| * Constructor | |
| */ | |
| public function __construct() { | |
| add_action( 'publish_to_expired', array( $this, 'expired_post' ) ); | |
| } | |
| /** | |
| * Expired post triggered by publish_to_expired hook | |
| * @param $post post object | |
| */ | |
| public function expired_post( $post ) { | |
| // DO THINGS HERE | |
| } | |
| } |
When the hook is triggered, the expired_post method will be called and passed a post object (the post which has had it’s status modified).
Check the post object
We must remember, this hook can be triggered by any post, not just a job. Let’s check it’s type:
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| if ( 'job_listing' == $post->post_type ) { | |
| // This is a job | |
| } |
Create your email alert content
We’ve got a trigger now, which also passes the post. Now we can use this to create the actual alert email, and send it using wp_mail.
Content wise, lets have this read:
Hello,
The job “{job_title}” which you posted on {sitename} has just expired and will no longer be visible.
To check your other active listings, or post a new job listing, please visit your dashboard.
Putting this into the code we’ll have this:
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| $message = sprintf( "Hello,\n\nThe job “%s” which you posted on %s has just expired and will no longer be visible.\n\nTo check your other active listings, or post a new job listing, please visit your dashboard.", esc_html( $post->post_title ), esc_html( get_bloginfo( 'name' ) ) ); |
Get the email address to notify
Two outcomes here; we can either send to the registered user, or the application email. If the user is a guest and provided neither, we can send nothing.
This code gets the application email (if set) from the listing, or if it’s not a guest submission, the user email.
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| $send_to = ''; | |
| $email = get_post_meta( $post->ID, '_application', true ); | |
| $user = $post->post_author; | |
| if ( is_email( $email ) ) { | |
| $send_to = $email; | |
| } elseif ( $user ) { | |
| $user = get_user_by( 'id', $user ); | |
| $send_to = $user->user_email; | |
| } | |
| if ( ! $send_to ) | |
| return; |
Send it
Now we just need to send the email. wp_mail makes this simple.
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| wp_mail( $send_to, 'Your job listing has expired', $message ); |
All together now
Here is the final code combined and ready to go:
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| class My_Job_Manager_Custom_Alerts { | |
| /** | |
| * Constructor | |
| */ | |
| public function __construct() { | |
| add_action( 'publish_to_expired', array( $this, 'expired_post' ) ); | |
| } | |
| /** | |
| * Expired post triggered by publish_to_expired hook | |
| * @param $post post object | |
| */ | |
| public function expired_post( $post ) { | |
| if ( 'job_listing' == $post->post_type ) { | |
| $send_to = ''; | |
| $email = get_post_meta( $post->ID, '_application', true ); | |
| $user = $post->post_author; | |
| if ( is_email( $email ) ) { | |
| $send_to = $email; | |
| } elseif ( $user ) { | |
| $user = get_user_by( 'id', $user ); | |
| $send_to = $user->user_email; | |
| } | |
| if ( ! $send_to ) | |
| return; | |
| $message = sprintf( "Hello,\n\nThe job “%s” which you posted on %s has just expired and will no longer be visible.\n\nTo check your other active listings, or post a new job listing, please visit your dashboard.", esc_html( $post->post_title ), esc_html( get_bloginfo( 'name' ) ) ); | |
| wp_mail( $send_to, 'Your job listing has expired', $message ); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| } | |
| new My_Job_Manager_Custom_Alerts(); |
And here is what you’ll receive:
Leave a Reply