On submitting a new activity, I got error "There was a problem posting your update, please try again."

[renp]

In activity stream, when I write something and click Post update, it always writes (in a red box): "There was a problem posting your update, please try again." and the activity is not saved.
Running on Wordpress 3.4.2, BuddyPress 1.6.1, Apache (httpd) 2.2.21, PHP 5.3.17 (also tried 5.2.17), MySQL 5.1.60, Windows 7.

[renp]

I've turned WP error logging on and this is the cause of the error:

WordPress database error: [Incorrect integer value: for column 'item_id' at row 1]
INSERT INTO wp_bp_activity ( user_id, component, type, action, content, primary_link, date_recorded, item_id, secondary_item_id, hide_sitewide, is_spam ) VALUES ( 1, 'activity', 'activity_update', '<a href=\"​http://localhost/members/admin/\" title=\"admin\">admin</a> posted an update', 'test', '​http://localhost/members/admin/', '2012-09-13 13:00:40', , , 0, 0 )
-1

[boonebgorges]

Thanks for the details.

What theme are you using? Other BP plugins? Can you enable your Javascript console, and (a) see if there are any errors when posting the new activity, and (b) look at the content of the POST payload?

[renp]

I've checked that the error occurs even on clean WP installation with the default BP template. In JS console, no error occurs. The ajax response is as follows (part of it is the error message which I posted above):

<div id='error'>

<p class='wpdberror'><strong>WordPress database error:</strong> [Incorrect integer value: &#039;&#039; for column &#039;item_id&#039; at row 1]<br />
<code>INSERT INTO wp_bp_activity ( user_id, component, type, action, content, primary_link, date_recorded, item_id, secondary_item_id, hide_sitewide, is_spam ) VALUES ( 1, &#039;activity&#039;, &#039;activity_update&#039;, &#039;&lt;a href=\&quot;​http://localhost/members/admin/\&quot; title=\&quot;admin\&quot;&gt;admin&lt;/a&gt; posted an update&#039;, &#039;sdgsdg&#039;, &#039;​http://localhost/members/admin/&#039;, &#039;2012-09-13 13:50:14&#039;, &#039;&#039;, &#039;&#039;, 0, 0 )</code></p>
</div>-1<div id="message" class="error"><p>There was a problem posting your update, please try again.</p></div>

[boonebgorges]

What's the data being sent along with the inital POST request? This is the 'Post' tab when viewing the expanded version of the POST request in Firebug.

[renp]

This should be it (it's from chrome actually):

action:post_update
cookie:http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2F%23s5_scrolltotop%3D0.75%2C0.75%3B%20http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2F%3D0.75%2C0.75%3B%20wp-settings-1%3Dmfold%253Do%3B%20wp-settings-time-1%3D1347355115%3B%20mp_globalcart_c9db569cb388e160e4b86ca1ddff84d7%3Da%253A1%253A%257Bi%253A2%253Ba%253A0%253A%257B%257D%257D%3B%20wp-settings-time-3%3D1347460003%3B%20wp-settings-time-2%3D1347463109%3B%20PHPSESSID%3Dqh4bu80nbcjj62qd66d1fsfme0%3B%20wp-settings-time-5%3D1347533852%3B%20bp_new_group_id%3D1%3B%20bp_completed_create_steps%3Da%253A4%253A%257Bi%253A0%253Bs%253A13%253A%2522group-details%2522%253Bi%253A1%253Bs%253A14%253A%2522group-settings%2522%253Bi%253A2%253Bs%253A12%253A%2522group-avatar%2522%253Bi%253A3%253Bs%253A13%253A%2522group-invites%2522%253B%257D%3B%20wp-settings-time-4%3D1347543059%3B%20wordpress_test_cookie%3DWP%2BCookie%2Bcheck%3B%20bp-activity-oldestpage%3D1
_wpnonce_post_update:b1e315c075
content:rrghrghwr
object:
item_id:0
_bp_as_nonce:

[DJPaul]

I can't recreate on WP 3.4.1 and BP 1.6.1.

[boonebgorges]

renp - Thanks for the additional info.

I've confirmed the issue. renp, you must be running MySQL using sql_mode TRADITIONAL or something like that, which means that what are normally syntax warnings (which fail gracefully) become fatal errors. This isn't the default setup, and I haven't heard this bug reported before, so I'm going to reduce the severity a bit.

In any case, the problem is that we recently (r5955) converted the item_id and secondary_item_id columns of the activity table to bigint(20). But we didn't, at the same time, change the $wpdb->prepare() statement in BP_Activity_Activity::get() to account for the fact that these values should be integers rather than strings. As a result, NULL becomes '', rather than 0.

Changing those two %s to %d fixes the problem in my tests. Can another dev have a look and let me know whether they foresee any complications with this?

[DJPaul]

Should be ok. In my database, existing records are set to 0, so shouldn't break any query.

[renp]

boonebgorges, thanks for an excellent support!
I've managed to fix the problem by modifying the query in bp-activity-classes.php so that if item_id is null, I send '0' to the DB (instead of ). The same applies to secondary_item_id.

[DJPaul]

Please keep the ticket open so we remember to patch BuddyPress :)

[boonebgorges]

Fixed in r6330