Clone Post with Unsaved Changes to a Draft

Adds a Save As button to the WordPress block editor that clones the current post or page — including unsaved changes — into a new draft and opens it.

• Author: Alimuzzaman Alim
• Requires: WordPress 6.6+ · PHP 7.4+
• License: GPL-2.0-or-later

For the end-user description, installation, and FAQ, see readme.txt (the WordPress.org-formatted readme). This file is the developer guide.

What it does

One click copies the post you are editing into a brand-new draft and redirects you to it — the original is never touched. It copies title, content, excerpt, featured image, taxonomies, discussion settings, format, template, and REST-exposed post meta, and works for posts, pages, and public custom post types.

The action is exposed in three places:

• the editor header toolbar (next to the native Save),
• the post status sidebar,
• the editor ⋮ (Options) menu (always available — the escape hatch when the other two are hidden).

A dialog lets you name the copy and toggle visibility preferences (persisted per-browser in localStorage).

Development

pnpm install     # install dependencies
pnpm start       # development build, watch mode
pnpm build       # one-off production build
pnpm typecheck   # tsc --noEmit (strict type checking)

Always run pnpm build after editing src/ — the PHP loads the compiled build/ output, not src/. build/ is gitignored, so it must be produced wherever the plugin is packaged/deployed.

Architecture

The editor source is written in TypeScript/TSX and split into focused modules:

src/
  index.tsx                  Entry point — registers the editor plugin.
  types.ts                   Shared types (RestPost, DraftPayload).
  preferences.ts             Typed localStorage preference helpers.
  api/draft.ts               REST copy logic: createDraftCopy, redirect, quickCopy.
  hooks/useToolbarSlot.ts    Injects a portal slot into the editor header toolbar.
  components/
    SaveAsModal.tsx          The dialog (title + preference checkboxes).
    SaveAsPlugin.tsx         Orchestration: buttons, menu, dialog, visibility state.

• State is read/written through @wordpress/data stores (core/editor, core); the DOM is touched only to mount the toolbar button.
• clone-post-unsaved-changes.php enqueues the compiled bundle on enqueue_block_editor_assets, reading dependencies/version from the generated *.asset.php manifest, and registers JS translations via wp_set_script_translations().
• Build: @wordpress/scripts with zero config — it auto-detects the src/index.tsx entry and emits build/index.js (+ build/index.asset.php). wp-scripts strips TypeScript via Babel at build time; pnpm typecheck runs tsc separately. Run pnpm plugin-zip to produce a distributable zip (see .distignore).

Internationalization

All user-facing strings use __/sprintf from @wordpress/i18n with the clone-post-unsaved-changes text domain, wired for translation via wp_set_script_translations(). The text domain matches the plugin slug, as required for WordPress.org language packs.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later