Site unavailable after update 1.3.0 : Parse error: unexpected ‘[‘ in …

  • Resolved gerrelt

    (@gerrelt)


    6 years, 9 months ago

    TL;DR; Plugin update made site unavailable, fixed it by changing empty brackets ( “[]” ) to “array()” at line 560, 594 and 601 in this file:
    plugins/nelio-content/includes/class-nelio-content-auto-sharer.php

    I’ve installed the latest update of the Nelio Content plugin, version 1.3.0 .
    But after installing the update my site didn’t work anymore. My admin site and the normal site where both white.

    I got the site going again by de-activating the Nelio-content plugin via the database (see #2 here).

    When I tried to re-activate the plugin I got this message:

    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[' in ..,path to my website.../wp-content/plugins/nelio-content/includes/class-nelio-content-auto-sharer.php on line 560

    I’ve looked in the php file and discovered this at line 560:
    return [];

    Apparently it didn’t like the brackets here. So I did some googling (I am not familiar with PHP), and apparently returning an empty list is done by calling:
    array()

    So I replaced the brackets with that so that it looked like this:
    return array();

    After saving and reactivating the plugin I got the same message but then at line 594, which also contained a line with returning empty brackets. I also changed those bracket by “array()” and reactivated the plugin.
    Again I got the error, but now on line 601.
    There I changed the empty brackets too, but this time it wasn’t a return. After my change it looked like this:
    $tags = array();

    And then reactivating the plugin didn’t gave errors anymore and the plugin worked!
    I use it mainly for “Featured Images”.

    Could it be that this problem has something to do with the PHP version I am using on my site?

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by gerrelt.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Thread Starter gerrelt

    (@gerrelt)

    6 years, 9 months ago

    Hmmmm…just checked, and my site is running PHP 5.3. Pretty low version.
    I guess that will be the problem?

    I see wordpress requires PHP 7 or higher. I will change it to 7.1, to prevent future problems.

    Thread Starter gerrelt

    (@gerrelt)

    6 years, 9 months ago

    OK, I’ve changed the PHP version to 7.1 and changed the “array()”‘s back to empty brackets, and the plugin is still working!

    Consider this issue solved.

    Plugin Author David Aguilera

    (@davilera)

    6 years, 9 months ago

    Hi @gerrelt,

    Thanks for the heads up and for taking the necessary steps to fix it. Upgrading to PHP 7.1 is a great step forward – afaik, its performance is way better than previous versions.

    That said, I also identified this issue (using square brackets [] for new arrays instead of the classic array() constructor), and I prepared a fix so that the plugin always use the classic version. I’ll release it later on today.

    Thanks again for your detailed feedback!

    Regards,
    David

    Thread Starter gerrelt

    (@gerrelt)

    6 years, 9 months ago

    Hi David,

    Yes, I indeed noticed the performance of my site improved with 7.1.

    Thank you for providing this great plugin!

    Greetings,
    Gerrelt.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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