Force post slug to be auto generated from title on save

I’m running a property site where many properties are sold in apartment blocks.

Because of this what the content editors do is create a post/property with all the details and then use a duplicate post plugin to create the others.

Each time they duplicate a post/property they change the title to reflect the property number and maybe change a few bits of meta data E.G price.

What they forget to do is wipe out the slug and let a new one be generated from the title. Here is an example slug from the first property entered:

merle-court-plot-50-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh

but then when they duplicate the slugs become:

merle-court-plot-50-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh-2
merle-court-plot-50-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh-2-2
merle-court-plot-50-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh-2-2-2
merle-court-plot-50-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh-2-2-2-2
etc

But when they change the titles the slugs would be better like:

merle-court-plot-51-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh
merle-court-plot-52-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh
merle-court-plot-53-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh
merle-court-plot-54-182-carlton-vale-nw6-5hh
etc

So my question:

How do I force the slug to be re-generated on post save, after they have updated the property title?

The slug for this CPT should always be auto generated, there is never a need to manually set it.

Answers:

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Method 1

The easiest workaround could be:

function myplugin_update_slug( $data, $postarr ) {
    if ( ! in_array( $data['post_status'], array( 'draft', 'pending', 'auto-draft' ) ) ) {
        $data['post_name'] = sanitize_title( $data['post_title'] );
    }

    return $data;
}
add_filter( 'wp_insert_post_data', 'myplugin_update_slug', 99, 2 );

Method 2

Also, run the slug from sanitize_title_with_dashes() through wp_unique_post_slug() to ensure that it’s unique. It will automatically append ‘-2’, ‘-3’ etc. if it’s needed.

Method 3

Instead of replacing spaces you should use the build in function sanitize_title() which will take care of the replacing for you.

Like this:

sanitize_title( $post_title, $post->ID );

Also, you should use a unique slug. Which you can get with the function wp_unique_post_slug()

So putting it all together a solution might be:

function myplugin_update_slug( $data, $postarr ) {
    if ( ! in_array( $data['post_status'], array( 'draft', 'pending', 'auto-draft' ) ) ) {
        $data['post_name'] = wp_unique_post_slug( sanitize_title( $data['post_title'] ), $postarr['ID'], $data['post_status'], $data['post_type'], $data['post_parent'] );
    }

    return $data;
}
add_filter( 'wp_insert_post_data', 'myplugin_update_slug', 99, 2 );

Method 4

Something I’ve had bookedmarked for a little while is the following (yet untested),

Source LINK

//add our action
add_action( 'save_post', 'my_save_post', 11, 2 );

function my_save_post($post_id, $post){

   //if it is just a revision don't worry about it
   if (wp_is_post_revision($post_id))
      return false;

   //if the post is an auto-draft we don't want to do anything either
   if($post->post_status != 'auto-draft' ){

       // unhook this function so it doesn't loop infinitely
       remove_action('save_post', 'my_save_post' );

      //this is where it happens -- update the post and change the post_name/slug to the post_title
      wp_update_post(array('ID' => $post_id, 'post_name' => str_replace(' ', '-', $_POST['post_title'])));

      //re-hook this function
      add_action('save_post', 'my_save_post' );
   }
}

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0