Unresponsive script when editing recurring events

[ddel]

Same or similar problem here. Trying to edit a recurring event results in an unresponsive script in Firefox and Chrome. Running events-calendar 4.5.2.1 and pro 4.4.8 on WP 4.7.5. Issue occurs with all other plugins disabled. The edit page WILL load if the events calendar pro plugin is disabled. We are running community events as well but the problem occurs even if that plugin is disabled. Seems to be isolated to recurring events.

/wp-admin/load-scripts.php seems to be the culprit.

This issue is not necessarily directly related to the very latest plugin versions. The issue was reported and I tried to resolve it by updating. We were a few minor updates behind the latest.

here’s what the console says:

Error: Script terminated by timeout at:
attr@https://example.com/wp-admin/load-scripts.php?c=1&load%5B%5D=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,plupload&ver=4.7.5:4:1
t.element@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/common/src/resources/js/dropdowns.min.js?ver=4.5.2:1:2377
each@https://example.com/wp-admin/load-scripts.php?c=1&load%5B%5D=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,plupload&ver=4.7.5:2:2879
each@https://example.com/wp-admin/load-scripts.php?c=1&load%5B%5D=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,plupload&ver=4.7.5:2:844
t.dropdown@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/common/src/resources/js/dropdowns.min.js?ver=4.5.2:1:4864
e.fn.tribe_dropdowns@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/common/src/resources/js/dropdowns.min.js?ver=4.5.2:1:419
my.init_dropdowns@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/events-calendar-pro/src/resources/js/events-recurrence.js?ver=4.4.8:129:3
my.add_exclusion@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/events-calendar-pro/src/resources/js/events-recurrence.js?ver=4.4.8:430:3
my.populate_recurrence@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/events-calendar-pro/src/resources/js/events-recurrence.js?ver=4.4.8:458:5
my.init_recurrence@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/events-calendar-pro/src/resources/js/events-recurrence.js?ver=4.4.8:93:3
my.init@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/events-calendar-pro/src/resources/js/events-recurrence.js?ver=4.4.8:13:3
@https://example.com/wp-content/plugins/events-calendar-pro/src/resources/js/events-recurrence.js?ver=4.4.8:1130:3
i@https://example.com/wp-admin/load-scripts.php?c=1&load%5B%5D=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,plupload&ver=4.7.5:2:27444
fireWith@https://example.com/wp-admin/load-scripts.php?c=1&load%5B%5D=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,plupload&ver=4.7.5:2:28213
ready@https://example.com/wp-admin/load-scripts.php?c=1&load%5B%5D=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,plupload&ver=4.7.5:2:30004
K@https://example.com/wp-admin/load-scripts.php?c=1&load%5B%5D=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,plupload&ver=4.7.5:2:30366

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PLEASE LEAVE FOR SUPPORT
Reporting the same issue as: https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/script-error-freezes-in-firefox-when-editing-events/

[ddel]

Just updated to 4.5.3 and pro 4.4.9. No change, it’s still impossible to edit a recurring event due to script timeouts.

[Andras]

Hello Troy,

Thanks for using our plugins and welcome to the forums!

I’m really sorry that you are having this hanging script issue. Let me try to help you solve that.

To be able to better support you, could you please share your system information with me?
Here’s a handy guide how you can do that: https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/sharing-sys-info/

Also, it would be great if you could share with me your hosting details: where is the site hosted, what package you have, is it shared hosting or dedicated, what are the settings (memory, execution time etc.).

Thanks and looking forward to helping you with this.

Cheers,
Andras

[ddel]

This reply is private.

[ddel]

Another piece of info. The _EventRecurrence postmeta metadata seems *really* screwy. I’ll attach that sucker here. If I delete _EventRecurrence for a post and then re-create the rules, I can then work with that post normally.

Can you tell me if this is indeed as screwy as it looks, and if so how something like this could happen?

Here’s the fixed recurrence data for post_id=2372:
a:3:{s:5:”rules”;a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:”type”;s:6:”Custom”;s:6:”custom”;a:3:{s:8:”interval”;s:1:”1″;s:9:”same-time”;s:3:”yes”;s:4:”type”;s:5:”Daily”;}s:8:”end-type”;s:5:”Never”;s:14:”EventStartDate”;s:19:”2016-03-18 18:30:00″;s:12:”EventEndDate”;s:19:”2017-06-02 21:00:00″;}}s:10:”exclusions”;a:0:{}s:11:”description”;N;}

And attached is the fubar sql of post_id, _EventRecurrence for all of our recurring events.

You might ask the creator of https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/script-error-freezes-in-firefox-when-editing-events/ if he’s seeing this behavior as well.

[Andras]

Hello Troy,

Hope you had a great weekend!

Thanks for sharing all that information, much appreciated, and it helps a lot now that I know the details.

Unfortunately the issue is knows. It is coming from the recurring events. A couple versions back we have changed how recurring events are handled in the backend and some _EventRecurrence metadata gets broken after the update, and thus you can get a buggy backend (incl. freezing scripts) when editing recurring events that have been created before the plugin update. 🙁

As said, we are aware of this issue and one of our developers is assigned to the ticket. According to the current plans the fix should come in about a month or so.

Until then there are 2 workaournds, but one of them might be a bit tough due to the sheer number of events you have:

1. Re-create the recurring events.

2. Roll back to a previous version of the plugin. Looking at your data I’d say 4.2.5 or so.

While this might not be the answer you were looking for, I hope it clarifies things a bit. I ask for you patience until we develop the fix.

I am going to set the status of this ticket to “pending fix” and we will update it once the fix is released. You can still post here regarding the topic.

If you have any new questions or issues please create a new ticket and we’ll be happy to help.

Thanks and cheers,
Andras

[ddel]

Hey András-

Thanks for the clear followup. At least knowing the actual cause is a positive. One quick question: If I manually remove the _EventRecurrence meta_key from the post’s postmeta, I can then re-create the recurrence rules and it seems as if that post is ok. Is this a viable long-term workaround while we await a fix?

In other words, if we were to do this for all of our broken events without completely deleting and recreating the entire event would that suffice or would the bad _EventRecurrence data issue return?

Another quick question: Do you guys post a full changelog somewhere? Trying to suss that information out of all of these separate release notes is a frustrating and time-wasting endeavor, especially given how slow the website often is.

[Andras]

Great questions, I was sorta afraid you’re going to ask that. 😀

To tell you the truth, I have no clue. But yes, it should work. As an addition, probably I would also delete the child events (meaning the recurrences) from the wp_posts table, just to be sure and to minimize junk in wp_posts.

When you create a recurring event, then 1 entry is created for the “main” event, and also separate entries are created for the recurrences which have the ID of the main event in the parent column of wp_posts.

When you will recreate the new recurrence rules, then a new set of child entries will be added to the table, and I’m not sure the old ones would be removed.

I guess you could test this with 1 recurring event and get confirmation that it works.

Cheers,
Andras

[Nico]

Hey,

Just wanted to share with you that a new maintenance release (for the Week of 12th June 2017) is out, including a fix for this issue ?

Find out more about this release → https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-for-the-week-of-12th-june-2017/

Please update the plugins and let us know if the fix works for your site,
Best,
Nico

[ddel]

Thanks for the followup but nope. Updated to 4.5.5 / 4.4.11.1 and there’s no improvement that I can see. The broken _EventRecurrence meta_value is unchanged after attempting to edit a broken recurring event.

Currently the client emails me when they need to work on a broken event and I fix the database for that event manually. Yay.

[Andras]

Hello Troy,

I’m sorry to hear the fix didn’t help.

Please note that the fix was developed for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly recurrence rules. It did not touch the custom rules and exclusions, though in exclusion handling there was no change.

I talked with my manager on how we could move further.

Would you be willing to share with us a full database dump? That would allow us to take a look at the rules you have in full detail to see what can be done.

Please let us know.

Thanks,
Andras

[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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