How do I make a foreach loop in a wordpress plugin?

Question

I am trying to make a plugin for woocommerce that, at each new order, take all the data that I need, split it by item in a foreach loop and then send each item data as a separate post through cURL. But my code don't seem to ignore the foreach loop. Here is the code for my loop:

add_action('woocommerce_new_order', 'wdm_send_order_to_ext'); 
function wdm_send_order_to_ext( $order_id ){

    // get order object and order details
    $order = wc_get_order($order_id);

    print_r(" Start ");
    if($order->get_items()>0)
    {
        print_r(" Item exist ");
        foreach($order->get_items() as $item_id => $item_data){
            print_r(" Foreach loop executing for item ID: $item_id ");
        }
    }
    else
    {
        print_r(" No Item ");
    }
    print_r(" End ");
 }

and my result is: Start Item exist End edit: When i used print_r on $order->get_items(), it printed as Array ( )

Hello, did you check if $order variable has any data or not? or are you sure that the hook is executing on the right time? — Asif
I tested that $order had data and the hook executed succefully. I the cURL request was outside of the loop before and I had access to the order and the other data that it contain : the address, name, ids, email, phone, cost of shipping, etc... — jonathan dubreuil
other thing is did you check that the controller atleast enters the foreach loop? — Asif
remove everything inside the loop, only add single echo statement and exit right after the echo then see what happens? — Asif

Steven Steven · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-05T21:19:56

The quickest way to find out whether you're able to execute a foreach loop is to strip out everything that isn't related to the foreach loop, via:

add_action('woocommerce_new_order', 'wdm_send_order_to_ext'); 
function wdm_send_order_to_ext( $order_id ){

    // get order object and order details
    $order = wc_get_order($order_id);

    $endpoint = "https://enwlq927zckka.x.pipedream.net"; 
    foreach($order->get_items() as $item_id => $item_data){
        echo "Foreach loop executing for item ID: $item_id.";
    }
 }

If you're seeing output, then you know you're executing the foreach loop. To debug these kinds of things, you need to get comfortable with stripping out the unnecessary and building off of what you can discern one piece at a time.

One thing you may be encountering (but is outside the scope of the way you worded your question) is that cURL calls can take a very long time to respond. Depending on how your server is configured, it may abort executing the PHP code if it doesn't finish executing after X number of seconds. Since I'm not familiar with the command $order->get_items() or with how many records it could be possibly returning, my guess is that you could be easily spending more than a minute executing hundreds or more cURL calls.

For things like this, verify each step along the way.

Also, it would help if you describe exactly what is happening instead of what does not seem to be happening. That way answers can be more impactful. When you're not sure if something is getting executed, you can always add in an echo statement to verify if the code is getting reached. Hope this helps!

How do I make a foreach loop in a wordpress plugin?

2 Answers