How Can I Change the Elementor Popup Location Settings? - wordpress

Question

I have an issue with one of the websites I work on where the "edit_in_content" location setting for Elementor popups is set to FALSE for all popups, and it is preventing the admin from going to the Elementor editor.
This issue presents itself as the common "the_content not found" error message, however, debugging leads to the location settings for popups being the issue. The problem is in the builder_wrapper method of \ElementorPro\Modules\ThemeBuilder\Classes\Locations_Manager, which is in /elementor-pro/modules/theme-builder/classes/locations-manager.php.
public function builder_wrapper( $content ) {
$post_id = get_the_ID();
if ( $post_id ) {
$document = Module::instance()->get_document( $post_id );
if ( $document ) {
$document_location = $document->get_location();
$location_settings = $this->get_location( $document_location );
/**
* Custom Modification Begin
* ------------------------------------
*/
if( $document_location == 'popup' )
return $content;
/**
* Custom Modification End
* ------------------------------------
*/
// If is a `content` document or the theme is not support the document location (header/footer and etc.).
if ( $location_settings && ! $location_settings['edit_in_content'] ) {
$content = '<div class="elementor-theme-builder-content-area">' . __( 'Content Area', 'elementor-pro' ) . '</div>';
}
}
}
return $content;
}
I'm aware that this is a plugin hack, and not recommended, but I have found no other way to handle the issue.
I'm not sure why edit_in_content is FALSE for all popups.
I've found no way to ensure that edit_in_content is TRUE so that the admin can work with popups.
To be fair, I should disclose that the theme is custom, but rather minimal. When switching to twentytwenty the issue goes away. ALL plugins have been disabled during testing, and it seems that the popup location setting is somehow being affected by the custom theme.
I've found nothing in twentytwenty that references elementor in any way.
I've been through Elementor's docs related to the_content issues, and nothing noted there leads to success. Ref: https://docs.elementor.com/article/56-content-area-not-found
So, I'm hoping somebody will be able to shed some light on this issue. What can I do so I don't have to hack the plugin?

Answer 1

I'm posting an answer because I found something that I could do to not hack the plugin, although I'm still curious to why it needs to be done. I basically just add a hook/action that reprocesses the popup location after it was initially registered. This could go in the theme's functions.php file:
function fixElementorPopupLocation( $that )
{
$loc = $that->get_location('popup');
if( ! $loc['edit_in_content'] )
{
$args = [
'label' => $loc['label'],
'multiple' => $loc['multiple'],
'public' => $loc['public'],
'edit_in_content' => TRUE,
'hook' => $loc['hook'],
];
$that->register_location('popup', $args);
}
}
add_action(
'elementor/theme/register_locations',
'fixElementorPopupLocation',
93062220
);
If anyone could tell me why I need to do this, and why I don't need this in the twentytwenty theme, I'd be glad to accept that as an answer, provided I can use the advice to "fix" my theme.