[Resolved] Duplicate entries in wp_postmeta

I just noticed that when copying a post with the Yoast Duplicate Post extension, the existing "_wpml_media_featured" and "_wpml_media_duplicate" entries are copied and a new one of each is created. Accordingly, the entries multiply with each copy operation, since both entries are added each time, even if they already exist.

I assume that the new ones are added by WPML each time. But wouldn't the extension have to check if the corresponding entries don't already exist before adding them?

Hello

Thank you very much for the explanations. The purpose of these entries is quite clear to me.
But my problem is that my database looks like shown in the screenshot (post_id, meta_key and meta_value is always the same). This bloats the database unnecessarily.

Regards

Hi

For almost all post IDs these keys exist multiple times, sometimes there are up to 43 duplicates per post ID.

Kind regards

Hi

We create new posts by copying existing ones using Yoast Duplicate Post (new draft). Accordingly, I was able to trace the following process:
Initial post 1 is created (not copied), keys "_wpml_media_featured" and "_wpml_media_duplicate" are written to database by WPML. Each of those keys exists for this post exactly once (as expected).
New post 2 is created by copying post 1. This copies the previous keys on the one hand, but at the same time WPML also inserts the keys again. So the keys "_wpml_media_featured" and "_wpml_media_duplicate" for post 2 exist twice.
New post 3 is created by copying post 2. This again copies the previous keys, but at the same time WPML also inserts the keys again. So the keys "_wpml_media_featured" and "_wpml_media_duplicate" for post 3 are now available three times.

With each copy operation the previous keys are copied and the keys "_wpml_media_featured" and "_wpml_media_duplicate" are added again. Accordingly, an additional set is added with each copy operation.

Does this help a little?

Hi

Great that you were able to reproduce the problem.

What I can't confirm though is that the keys are only duplicated when the post is published. For testing purposes, I copied the post with ID 57 on the sandbox website by just clicking on the link "New Draft" in the post overview at post 57. When the post 58 was opened in the editor, the database showed up as in the attached screenshot: At post 57 the two meta_keys were present 5 times each, but at post 58 they were already present 6 times each. I had neither resaved nor published the post.

Thank you very much for escalating and your support.

Hi

That was much faster than expected. Thanks for the great tip. So far everything seems to work fine. I was also able to use the tip for a meta key of another plugin.

I would now clean up the postmeta table with the following query:

DELETE t1 FROM wp_postmeta AS t1
INNER JOIN wp_postmeta AS t2 
WHERE 
t1.meta_id < t2.meta_id AND 
t1.post_id = t2.post_id AND
t1.meta_key = t2.meta_key;

Do you see any issues related to WPML that this could cause?

Many thanks and kind regards

My issue is resolved now. A thousand thanks for the support.