Wordpress Widget not saving

Question

I'm trying to save a simple widget, however everytime I hit save, it does not save the values. Instead the form is refreshed to a default value.

The code is below.

What I have found is that the value of $instance in the update() function is an empty array i.e. array() why is this??

<?php 

defined('ABSPATH') or die("Cannot access pages directly.");

defined("DS") or define("DS", DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);

add_action( 'widgets_init', create_function( '', 'register_widget("Page_Widget");' ) );
add_action( 'admin_head', 'page_widget_admin_head' );

$pw_class = new Page_Widget();
add_action( 'wp_ajax_nopriv_pw_get_option', array($pw_class, 'get_options'));
add_action( 'wp_ajax_pw_get_option',  array($pw_class, 'get_options'));

function page_widget_admin_head()
    {

    if(basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']) != 'widgets.php'){return false; }

    echo '<style> .titler { width:80px; display:inline-block; }</style>';

    echo '<script type="text/javascript">

                            jQuery(function($){

                                  $(".post_type_select").live("change", function(){
                                                                        the_opt = $(this).val();
                                                                        el = $(this);
                                                                        $.post(ajaxurl, "action=pw_get_option&pw_post_type="+the_opt, function(data){

                                                                                                el.siblings(".posts_select").html(data);  

                                                                                                                                           })

                                                                                 });


                                  });</script>';


    }

/**
 * 
 * @author byrd
 * Document Widget
 */
class Page_Widget extends WP_Widget
{
    /**
     * Constructor
     * 
     * Registers the widget details with the parent class
     */
    function __construct()
    {
        // widget actual processes
        parent::__construct( $id = 'page_widget', $name = 'Page Widget', $options = array( 'description' => 'A Widget for grabbing page ids' ) );
    }

    function form($instance)
    {
        // outputs the options form on admin
        $post_type_str = '<span class="titler">Post Type: </span><select name="pw_post_type" class="post_type_select">';        
        $post_types = get_post_types(array('public' => true),' objects'); 
        $i = 1;

        $pw_post_type = '';
        $pw_post_id = '';

        error_log(var_export($instance, true));

        if ( $instance ) {

            $pw_post_type = esc_attr( $instance[ 'pw_post_type' ] );
            $pw_post_id = esc_attr( $instance[ 'pw_post_id' ] );

        }

        foreach ($post_types as $post_type ) {

          $name = $post_type->labels->name;
          $var  = $post_type->name;

              if($i == 1){$first = $var; }
              if($pw_post_type == $var){$selected  = 'selected="selected"'; }else{$selected = ''; }

              $post_type_str .= '<option '.$selected.' value="'.$var.'">'. $name. '</option>';
              $i++;

        }

        $options = $this->get_options($first, $pw_post_id);
        $post_type_str .= '</select><br/><span class="titler">Post Name: </span><select name="pw_post_id" class="posts_select">'.$options.'</select>';

        echo $post_type_str;

    }

    function get_options($post_type = false, $pw_post_id = '', $ajax = false)
    {   

        if(!$post_type){ $post_type = $_POST['pw_post_type']; $ajax = true; }

        $args = array('numberposts' => -1, 'post_type' => $post_type);
        $str = '';
        $posts_array = get_posts( $args );
        foreach( $posts_array as $post ) 
        {   
            if($pw_post_id == $post->ID){$selected  = 'selected="selected"'; }else{ $selected = ''; }
            $str .= '<option '.$selected.' value="'.$post->ID.'">'.$post->post_title.'</option>';
        }

        if($ajax){ echo $str; exit(); }
        else{ return $str; }

    }

    function update($new_instance, $old_instance)
    {
        error_log(var_export($new_instance, true));
        error_log(var_export($old_instance, true));
        // processes widget options to be saved
        $instance = wp_parse_args($old_instance, $new_instance);
        return $new_instance;
    }

    function widget($args, $instance)
    {
        // outputs the content of the widget


    }

}

Answer 1

Change your class name which is

class Page_Widget extends WP_Widget

to this

class WP_Widget_Page_Widget extends WP_Widget

and also change this line

add_action( 'widgets_init', create_function( '', 'register_widget("Page_Widget");' ) );

to

add_action( 'widgets_init', create_function( '', 'register_widget("WP_Widget_Page_Widget ");' ) );

This will work insaAllah.

Answer 2

Looks like you asked this a while ago, but I'll answer in case others follow along.

Make sure you're using:

$field_name = $this->get_field_name('your_field_name');

when creating field names for your widget form items. The field names need to conform to WordPress' naming conventions. Otherwise, you'll get nothing back from the form post.