show the number of lesson views for learnpress plugin

Question

hello I have this code snippet in function.php that actually I used a learnpress plugin hook for it: learn-press/course-item-content also I tried this one: learn-press/lesson-start and the goal is to have the number of learnpress lesson views for each lesson for guests and not logged in users. I have created the custom field views for lp_lesson type with Pods plugin.

<?PHP
// I inserted this code to show the number of views for each lesson  
//*************************************************************
add_action('learn-press/course-item-content', 'lesson_views');
function lesson_views(){
     $item = LP_Global::course_item();
     if(is_user_logged_in()){
         $user = wp_get_current_user();
         if ( !in_array( 'subscriber', (array) $user->roles ) ) {
             return;
         }
     }
         echo "<script>console.log('get_post_field".get_post_field('views',$item->get_id())."'); 
</script>";
         $tempval = 0;
     if(get_post_field('views',$item->get_id())==''||get_post_field('views',$item->get_id())==null)
     {
         $tempval = 1;
         echo "<script>console.log('tempval = 1');</script>";
     }
     else
     {
         $tempval = intval(get_post_field('views',$item->get_id()))+1;
         echo "<script>console.log('tempval = ".$tempval."');</script>";
     }
         update_post_meta($item->get_id(),'views',$tempval,get_post_field('views',$item->get_id()));
         echo "<script>console.log('get_post_field".get_post_field('views',$item->get_id())."'); 
 </script>";
 //End Of the code to show the number of views for each lesson 
 //*************************************************************    
}
add_action( 'updated_post_meta', 'my_update_post_meta', 10, 4 );

function my_update_post_meta($meta_id, $post_id, $meta_key, $_meta_value) 
{
    echo "<script>console.log('sth updated".$_meta_value."');</script>";
    if($meta_key =="views"){
        echo "<script>console.log('views updated".$_meta_value."');</script>";
    }
}

I noticed that the update for the field views happens once, but when I refresh the page, it actually happened twice. for example if now the views=1 and I go to the page, it will be views=2, but after refresh the page, I understand the last value for views was not 2, but views=3! and now it will change to views=4. I checked if in the line that $tempval = intval(get_post_field('views',$item->get_id()))+1; happens if I change the increasing value for example to 3, it will results that if views equals 1, and I go to the page and views updates to 4, but after that I go again to the page, the value is 7 at the start, and it will change to 10 and so on. I do not get it why this happens twice while I can not see any evidence that says this code happens twice. because the script codes that I put for check happens once, and the check in update hook proves it.

Answer 1

I did not found the reason behind happening this twice, but in a tricky way I could write a code to have the number of page views of a lesson and use in in elementor plugin. here is the code:

add_action('learn-press/lesson-start', 'lesson_views');
 function lesson_views($item){
     //$itemc = LP_Global::course_item();
     echo "<script>console.log('get_post_field".get_post_field('views',$item- 
 >get_id())."');</script>";
     $tempdata = get_post_field('views',$item->get_id());
     $postview = intval($tempdata);
     $postviewf = floatval($tempdata);
     $newvalue = floatval(0);
     if($postviewf > 0){
         if($postviewf - $postview == 0.5){
             $newvalue = round($postviewf);
         }else{
             $newvalue = $postview+0.5;
         }
         echo "<script>console.log('newvalue".$newvalue."');</script>";
     }else{
         $newvalue = 0.5;
     }
     $postID = $item->get_id();
     update_post_meta($postID,'views',$newvalue,$tempdata);
     echo "<script>console.log('get_post_field".get_post_field('views',$item- 
  >get_id())."');</script>";

 //End Of the code to show the number of views for each lesson  
 *************************************************************  
 }
 add_action( 'updated_post_meta', 'my_update_post_meta', 10, 4 );
 
     function my_update_post_meta($meta_id, $post_id, $meta_key, $_meta_value) 
     {
         echo "<script>console.log('sth updated".$_meta_value."');</script>";
         if(get_post_type( $post_id )=='lp_lesson' && $meta_key =="views"){
             echo "<script>console.log('views updated".$_meta_value."');</script>";
             update_post_meta($post_id,'viewsv2',round($_meta_value));
         }
     }

if you try to view viewsv2 as custom field in elementor plugin it shows the exact number of page views for users with role subscriber which are students and not logged in users which are guests.