Event duplication

[DASA Tech Apps & Dev]

Hi. Testing Events Calendar Pro but getting massive duplications on Google Calendar imports:
https://dasa.ncsu.edu/events-temp/

In particular you’ll notice “Red Fridays”, though there are some other examples. The frequency of duplications is inconsistent (sometimes 4time, 7 time, 8 times…).

Event update is set to “overwrite.”

Tips? Settings we should be checking on?

[Cliff]

Hi, Leslie. Sorry you’re experiencing this.

We’ve received reports of this from several users but haven’t been able to replicate it. At this time, the only solution is to manually delete the duplicates.

To assist in troubleshooting, could you please provide the Google iCal URL you’re importing from?

Also, before deleting any duplicates, could you please check your wp_posts table to see the assigned author of them? I saw from another user that sometimes the author ID is set to zero, which is an error, and that the event’s Description is fully missing.

Please let me know what you find out.

[DASA Tech Apps & Dev]

Hey Cliff. So My name is actually Jen – we’re the web staff that helps them with their site.

I’m waiting to hear from them on the Google iCal address but I did look up the events in the DB and the post_author for some entries is indeed ‘0’ though others do have another author. There’s also no event_description, though there is post_content for most. Not sure what events are supposed to have wrt data imports.

Thanks.

[Cliff]

Jen, that sounds like the exact same (empty Descriptions too) as the other person’s issue. Could you elaborate on the post_content not being empty though? The Event Description is the post_content.

You should be able to find Gcal’s iCal URL at wp-admin > Events > Import > Scheduled Imports tab

Please send a database dump for our developers’ further investigation (in a Private Reply, which you cannot do via email replies).

[Cliff]

Jen, I am sorry for not being in better communication with this issue.

Our Event Aggregator development team has been either been fully out (inconvenient timing, I know) or heavily loaded (unable to dig into this particular issue that you and 2 others have reported).

I, again, am very sorry for the long delay and hope to have a meaningful answer to you next week.

[Cliff]

Please do send over all information that would be helpful, though, such as links and a database dump. Thank you.

[Cliff]

Thanks for your patience.

After investigating another user’s database, it looks like duplicates were created by imports from September or earlier, which would line up with the fix we pushed out in September to address this bug.

We put together a plugin for you to try out in your staging environment (of course, we always recommend restorable database and file backups before modifying anything on your production or staging site): https://cl.ly/3b3p0G0p2F2N

It should find all the duplicates, based on the imported iCal event’s UID. All you do is activate the plugin (again, in your staging/testing site first), and it’ll delete the duplicates in batches (so it doesn’t bring down your site). Then see if its deletions look legit. If yes, do the same to your actual production site.

Then, going forward, Event Aggregator should be able to pick up where you left off — for future events — including filling in any missing information (Event Description or otherwise).

===

An alternative method is to wipe out all events — especially if they were all created via EA import and none were created via manual entry in wp-admin — and then just let EA do its thing going forward, since our current code shouldn’t be creating duplicates (since September).

Please thoroughly review these options and get back to me with any thoughts, questions, or report back how things worked for you.

I’m looking forward to hearing back from you.

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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