Triggering wp_update_plugins cron to automatically update plugins in WordPress - wordpress

Question

I am trying to force plugin updates with WordPress, but it doesn't seem to be working. I need to force these updates within a custom plugin itself.
I added the following filter into my plugin:
add_filter( 'auto_update_plugin', '__return_true' );
I made sure that nothing in the wp_config file disallows auto-updates. Even though I didn't need to, to be safe I also set:
define( 'FS_METHOD', 'direct' );
and define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true );
I then installed the Advanced Cron Manager plugin to trigger the wp_update_plugins event, but this did not update any plugins.
I decided to simply call the wp_maybe_auto_update() function within my plugin on init... and it worked and updated my plugin - but also disabled it!
I am wondering if anyone knows why running the wp_update_plugins cron event wouldn't be updating any plugins? There must be a really simple solution here that I'm missing! Your help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

You could use the following function to update a plugin programatically:
function upgrade_plugin( $plugin_slug ) {
include_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader-skin.php';
include_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php';
wp_cache_flush();
$upgrader = new Plugin_Upgrader();
$upgraded = $upgrader->upgrade( $plugin_slug );
return $upgraded;
}
& you could use that in conjunction with get_plugins
// Check if get_plugins() function exists. This is required on the front end of the
// site, since it is in a file that is normally only loaded in the admin.
if ( ! function_exists( 'get_plugins' ) ) {
require_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/plugin.php';
}
$all_plugins = get_plugins();
and then loop over it to update the plugins
foreach ( $all_plugins as $key => $value ) {
upgrade_plugin( $key );
}
I found this article useful when putting together this answer: https://wpreset.com/programmatically-automatically-download-install-activate-wordpress-plugins/

Answer 2

From the answer above I got this to work, you just need to remove the extra / from include_once ABSPATH . '/wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader-skin.php';
to make it: include_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader-skin.php';

Answer 3

When I am relying on a cron event (Testing with WP Crontrol plugin) to take care of plugin update, following code seems to be working with given required files:
include_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/file.php';
include_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php';
include_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/misc.php';
$upgrader = new Plugin_Upgrader();
$result = $upgrader->upgrade($plugin_slug);
if (is_wp_error($result) || !$result) {
// Check if error, else updated successfully
}