Using get_the_ID() in a Shortcode Causes JSON and PHP Errors in Guttenberg

Question

Using a Wordpress plugin suite called Toolslet, I've been building a content template to dynamically display Woocommerce order information.

I've written a shortcode that works perfectly outside of Guttenberg to display the order information for the current order in the loop:

/*** Shortcode to return any aspect of a Woocommerce order ***/
/* Accepts parameters 'id' and 'token':
/* 'id' = If ID is blank current loop item ID is used otherwise it needs to be a class ID
/* 'attribute' = The Woocommerce order array item wanted.  Defaults to order ID */

function get_order_info($atts) {

  //Set the default $atts values
  $defaults = array(
    'id'        =>   get_the_ID(),
    'attribute'     =>   'id'
  );

  //Apply default atts if none have been set
  $atts = shortcode_atts( $defaults, $atts );

  //Get the WC_Order object for the current order in the loop
  $order = wc_get_order( $atts['id'] );

  //Get the order data
  $order_data = $order->get_data();

  //Return whichever order data item is requested
  return $order_data[$atts['attribute']];

}
add_shortcode("order_info", "get_order_info");

But trying to use this in a content template (a post that is reused to display information for any post in a custom post type) causes Guttenberg to display:

Updating failed. The response is not a valid JSON response.

And PHP throws this error:

Call to a member function get_data on bool

Both of these errors are the result of this line of code:

$order_data = $order->get_data();

As I understand it, the PHP error is saying that get_data() is returning a boolean, ie FALSE, which means that it's not getting the order ID correctly. However is saving and getting the order ID because working on the front end and trying to dump and of the following displays the correct ID:

$defaults['id'];
$atts['id'];
get_the_ID();

I've seen similar questions on here, but they all focus on the ID not being present when it clearly is here.

Answer 1

get_the_ID() function retrieve current page or post ID so if you want to show order data, it should be outside of the short code like this:

$id = get_the_ID();
$attributes = "id";
do_shortcode("[order_info id='.$id.' attributes='.$attributes.']");

function get_order_info( $atts ) {

  //Set the $atts id or default id
  if( $atts['id'] ){
    $id = $atts['id'];
  }
  else{
    $id = $default_id;
  }

  //Set the $atts attributes or default attributes
  if( $atts['attributes'] ){
    $attributes = $atts['attributes'];
  }
  else{
    $attributes = 'id';
  }

  //Get the WC_Order object for the current order in the loop
  $order = wc_get_order( $id );

  //Get the order data
  $order_data = $order->get_data();

  //Return whichever order data item is requested

  // show all order data
  // print_r($order_data);

  // show only specific data
  return $order_data[ $attributes ];
}

add_shortcode("order_info", "get_order_info");

Answer 2

This was happening because any of the methods of getting the post ID were returning the ID of the content template being edited in the WordPress backend, not the actual order. The logic used in this approach cannot run on the WP backend editor but will be perfectly fine on the front end.

Fortunately, Toolset has a simple option to disable a snippet from running on the backend, so doing that has worked around this issue.