Title: save_post & post_status help
Last modified: August 21, 2016

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# save_post & post_status help

 *  [jspitz725](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jspitz725/)
 * (@jspitz725)
 * [12 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/save_post-post_status-help/)
 * Hi,
 * I’m trying to get the post_status of a post before it is updated in the database.
   If I hook into save_post, I’m hoping that the post_status will have already been
   changed to publish. Am I correct?
 * Essentially, I have this hack where I modify the post content, but only when 
   a post is published or updated. I don’t want to modify the post content if the
   post is a draft or a preview or anything of that sort.
 * How can I check this on the fly? I’ve tried get_post_status(”), but let’s say
   I’m working on a draft…get_post_status(”) == ‘draft’ and when I click publish,
   my code still considers it as a draft until the page gets refreshed (then it 
   considers it as published).
 * Sorry for the confusing question and thank you in advance for any help. I can
   clarify any questions.
 * Thanks

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [12 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/save_post-post_status-help/#post-3932290)
 * ‘save_post’ fires for any number of statuses, you cannot assume it has been set
   to publish. However, it does fire after whatever status has been saved to the
   DB.
 * If you want a action that only fires for posts that have their status set to 
   publish after an update, use ‘publish_post’. Check the source code for `wp_transition_post_status()`
   in wp-includes/post.php for several other variants of actions that fire for different
   status transitions, all just after being saved to the DB.
 *  Thread Starter [jspitz725](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jspitz725/)
 * (@jspitz725)
 * [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/save_post-post_status-help/#post-3932392)
 * Thank you. After looking at `wp_transition_post_status()` I noticed that `save_post`
   fires AFTER the post status is set to publish. I was pretty confused before, 
   but now `save_post` works.
 * The only question I have left is what the hell the difference is between `$_POST["
   content"]` and `$_POST["post_content"]`
 * Thanks again!
 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/save_post-post_status-help/#post-3932395)
 * `$_POST["content"]` is a PHP array element containing the post content submitted
   when you click “Update”. This content is in a textarea form element with the 
   attribute name=”content”.
 * There should not be a `$_POST["post_content"]` because there is no form element
   with that name. Where ‘post_content’ comes from is the column name in the WP 
   posts DB table. As such, when you use a function such as `get_post()`, ‘post_content’
   is a key name of the post array returned by the function. So if your code was:
   `
   $mypost = get_post(227, ARRAY_A);`
 * `$mypost` will be assigned an associative array for post ID 227 (because of the
   ARRAY_A parameter, otherwise by default you get an object). Thus you can access
   the post’s content with $mypost[“post_content”]. But the super global $_POST 
   would typically never have an array key “post_content” unless some theme or plugin
   modified an edit form.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘save_post & post_status help’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [post](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/post/)
 * [post_status](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/post_status/)
 * [save](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/save/)
 * [save_post](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/save_post/)
 * [status](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/status/)

 * In: [Hacks](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/plugins-and-hacks/hacks/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * Last activity: [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/save_post-post_status-help/#post-3932395)
 * Status: not resolved

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