JSON error…

[geekteq]

Hi guys,

I’ve been discussing a “crash” between the Facebook Importer and the Manage WP Worker Plugin with ManageWP. They’ve been trying to solve the issue but to no avail. I did the tests and managed to narrow it down to the ManageWP Worker and they’ve been trying to fix the issue.. unfortunately the error message is a bit non-descript..
{“success”:false,”message”:”Please enter a message.”}

They are quite keen on getting this working and are willing to provide you with a ManageWP test account where you could replicate the issue, if you can’t see on the message what is happening. If this is any help to you then please email me and I’ll provide you with a contact that is ‘read in’ on the case.

Right now I have to disable my ManageWP Worker and import facebook-events manually and the re-enable stuff again.

[Barry]

We can’t offer any guarantees but we’ll certainly be happy to take a look, particularly given it sounds like the ManageWP team are happy to help out as needed. Could you post the email address of your contact here (as a private reply)?

[geekteq]

This reply is private.

[Barry]

Thanks: we’ll make contact and see what we can figure out. Please do be aware that there may be a longer-than-usual delay before we next update this thread, simply as we don’t know how quickly things will progress – but we certainly will continue to update this thread periodically (just not every 24hrs).

[geekteq]

Of course. If you can solve it I’ll be happy – since it’s a wee bit bothersome to disable the other function, import from facebook, then re-enable again (with the steps needed on the other side as well) 😉

[Barry]

Definitely. We’ve reached out and are just awaiting a response, and can take things from there. Thanks for your patience!

[Barry]

Hi – apologies for the delay, first of all.

ManageWP were quick to respond and I just wanted to acknowledge their willingness to help with this. What I wasn’t clear on initially was that they weren’t actually able to replicate this at all in their own tests, where everything worked without issue.

That suggests to me that it is very much something that is local to your own installation (perhaps environmental in nature, or perhaps something else is creating or compounding the conflict) rather than being a general problem. With that in mind and given the conflict occurs with a third party plugin and, it seems, only if a very particular set of conditions are met I don’t think we’re going to be able to take this any further.

Sorry we can’t offer more on this occasion.

 

[geekteq]

So, basically I’m screwed then – I either have to disable ManageWP which I pay money to use, disabling it magically makes your plugin work, or ditch your plugin which I paid money to use..
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that other things might be in play here but if I disable the one thing the other works and if I turn it back on it starts acting up again.

[Barry]

I can understand your frustration. Let me share my notes in the first instance and then summarize our take on this.

• The ManageWP’s worker plugin (MWP) runs a piece of code during the admin_init action (when the admin environment initializes)
• This piece of code – MMB_Core::send_email_to_admin() –  checks to see if a field called support_mwp_message has been submitted via a form
• If that field is present but completely empty it then returns an error message via MMB_Core::mwp_send_ajax_response() and this ultimately generates precisely the same piece of JSON you referenced in your initial post and kills execution of the request (so MWP is indeed the source of this)
• Why that is happening during import of Facebook events I have no idea – but I can reassure you our own plugin has no knowledge of the above functions, nor is the field support_mwp_message ever generated by them

So it’s a strange problem, but not one where there is an obvious cause in terms of our own code. So, one possibility is that this is being compounded by the presence of some other component (another plugin/theme). With that in mind you could try our usual troubleshooting steps, with the difference that you would also keep ManageWP Worker active:

• Ensure The Events Calendar, Facebook Importer and ManageWP Worker are up to date
• Deactivate all other plugins
• Switch to a default and unmodified theme
• Now see if the same problem happens

If on following those steps you found that the problem did not occur then that suggests something else is at work here (perhaps another plugin or theme is triggering form submissions inappropriately, or something of that order).

Since the root of this doesn’t appear to be in our code and nor could ManageWP’s own support team actually replicate the problem in their own test environment (had they been able to and it looked like a generally reproducible problem then of course we’d have taken this further) I don’t think we’re really going to be able to assist on this one.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience and disruption this causes for you, but I equally hope you understand our position on this.

[geekteq]

Fortunately MWP has taken it further so we might be able to figure it out. They got a copy of the website backed up and can test it more extensively in their test-environment. I understand your position as such but I also have the position that something I pay for should be working regardless of which theme or plugins I have installed. Now, I’m not saying it’s all your fault and thankfully MWP is, as I said, looking into it on another level.

[Barry]

That’s great that they are going the extra mile here – and if we can answer any questions they might have with regards to our own codebase we’ll be more than happy to answer them 🙂

[geekteq]

Hey folks, so it would seem that the guys at ManageWP found the error, unfortunately it seems to be in your code. They’ve sent you an email with the description so I hope to see a new, bugfixed, version out shortly? 🙂 I can fix it myself in the plugin but it might more prudent to wait for yours.

[Barry]

OK, great that they got to the bottom of this.

If you feel comfortable fixing this please go right ahead as it sounds like you’ve been appraised of the problem and solution – essentially, the second <form> element ought to be </form> in admin-views/import-page.php.

Such a change to core code will be overwritten of course as soon as you next update, but hopefully we’ll have a fix in place at that point (and in the worst case you would just restore the same fix, but hopefully it won’t come to that).

Thanks for your patience and perseverance – and thanks of course to the ManageWP team 🙂

[Author]

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