May have found a bug with the “get_post_type” function

I have encountered a weird behavior in the WP code and I wanted to report it, in case it is a bug.

I have a custom post type created. A function is added to the before_delete_post hook. In this function, I am verifying the current post type.

I used to verify it with the get_post_type() function but I have found a problem with that in some cases. Now, I have replaced it with global $post_type;

class My_Example {
	public function build_admin() {
		add_action('before_delete_post', array($this, 'delete_post'));
	}

	public function delete_post($post_id) {
		$case1 = get_post_type();

		global $post_type;
		$case2 = $post_type;
	}
}

On the posts listing page, in the Trash table, there are 3 says of deleting posts:

• 1. The Delete Permanently button for each post.
• 2. The Empty Trash button.
• 3. And through Bulk Actions > Delete Permanently > Apply.

The get_post_type() function returns the proper post type name only in the 1st case. For the other 2 cases, it returns false.

However, global $post_type returns the proper value in all cases.

I don’t know if it is a bug but it seems that way on the surface. If the global post type variable is set well, then the function should be able to return it too but I am not sure if something else it at play here.

A bit more info:

Looking over the source code for the get_post_type function in Code Reference, I see that it is using the get_post function to retrieve an object, instance of WP_Post, from which it gets the post type.

So, the value is retrieved from different locations in the two examples.

• This topic was modified 9 years, 2 months ago by ancientro.
• This topic was modified 9 years, 2 months ago by ancientro.