“Debug” output is generated during WP Cron runs

It looks like debug text is being generated during WP Cron runs. Normally no text should be returned when the wp-cron.php endpoint is hit. We’ve experienced four sites that now dump some product text on an hourly schedule:

simple == 816<br/>simple == 598<br/>simple == 596<br/>simple == 597<br/>simple == 593<br/>simple == 591<br/>variation == 177<br/>variation == 175<br/>simple == 87<br/>simple == 84<br/>simple == 816<br/>simple == 598<br/>simple == 596<br/>simple == 597<br/>simple == 593<br/>simple == 591<br/>variation == 177<br/>variation == 175<br/>simple == 87<br/>simple == 84<br/>simple == 816<br/>simple == 598<br/>simple == 596<br/>simple == 597<br/>simple == 593<br/>simple == 591<br/>variation == 177<br/>variation == 175<br/>simple == 87<br/>simple == 84<br/>

Self closing BR tags which are only supposed to be present, in the now deprecated, XHTML were easy to find in the plugin file. In
webappick-product-feed-for-woocommerce/includes/classes/class-woo-feed-products.php:161: echo $prod->get_type();echo " == ".$prod->get_id(); echo "<br/>";

The above line seems to be the only echoed output within the file. It’s a little hard to tell what’s going on because the file is a mess of both braced and braceless control structures and terse comments.

Commenting this line out resolves the issue. We’ll try to find better written plugin at some point in the future, but this may be helpful for anyone else experiencing weird output.