[Resolved] Issue with duplicate post titles when editing

[Author]

Posts

[aaronW-4]

Tell us what you are trying to do?
I am implementing code to prevent duplicate post titles. I used a ticket from 2019 and it works great... The problem is that I have an edit form for posts and it won't save changes because the post title is the same as the title of the post you are editing. I could just remove the code from the edit form, but if the user decides to edit the name of the post, they shouldn't be able to use a name that someone else might already have. So, for the edit form, I need to prevent duplicate post titles but disregard the name of the post they are editing.

Is there any documentation that you are following?
https://toolset.com/forums/topic/prevent-duplicate-post-titles-from-being-created/

Is there a similar example that we can see?

What is the link to your site?
hidden link

[Nigel]

Do you want to share the final version of the code you are using? (That thread includes a lot of back and forth about it.)

[aaronW-4]

Of course. Here is what I added for the post creation form and the post edit form:

 
/* Validate CRED Forms */
add_filter('cred_form_validate','func_validate_title',10,2);
function func_validate_title($error_fields, $form_data){
     
    list($fields,$errors)=$error_fields;
     
    $forms_array =  array( 20, 23 );
 
    if (in_array($form_data['id'], $forms_array)) {
 
        // get the title from the form
        $title = $_POST['post_title'];
 
        // query to get the posts to compare
        $args = array( "post_type" => "crowd", "posts_per_page" => -1, "post_status" => array('publish', 'draft') );
        $query = get_posts( $args );
 
        if (count($query) > 0){
 
            //set error message for the title field if a post of the same title exists
            foreach ($query as $post) {
                if (strtolower($post->post_title) == strtolower($title)) {
                    $errors['post_title']='Duplicate Title! Add another!';
                    break; 
                }
            }
        }
    }
  
    //return result
    return array($fields,$errors);
}

[Jamal]

You will need to pull the current title from the database and compare it to the newly typed title. Put the following code at line 10:

// get post_id
$post_id = $form_data['container_id'];
// get the post
$post = get_post( $post_id );
// If title is the same return, otherwise continue
if ( $post->post_title == $_POST['post_title']) return array($fields,$errors);

[aaronW-4]

My issue is resolved now. Thank you!