[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #39953: REST API: Add `date_floating` flag for posts

[WordPress Trac]

#39953: REST API: Add `date_floating` flag for posts
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 Reporter:  jnylen0                       |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement                   |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                        |   Milestone:  5.0
Component:  REST API                      |     Version:  4.7
 Severity:  normal                        |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch needs-unit-tests  |     Focuses:  rest-api
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Comment (by TimothyBlynJacobs):

 We discussed this in the rest-api chat earlier today.

 One of the options mentioned earlier in the ticket by @earnjam looks like
 it should work.

 > I suppose we could make a pretty good guess that it's supposed to be a
 floating date when looking at the API response right now if the post
 status is draft or auto-draft and date is identical to modified. The only
 way I think that scenario would not be true is if you manually set the
 date to the exact second you saved the draft. Highly unlikely, but it
 still feels potentially unreliable.

 While that solution might seem slightly weird at first glance, I think it
 makes sense conceptually. If the date and the modified date are the same,
 then we're still working on the post because those are both updated at
 every write. As mentioned we don't have an actual `created_at` date. This
 would save us having to add the new field.

 We couldn't figure out a time when those two dates wouldn't match and in
 testing it looked like it would work to fulfill Gutenberg's needs. We
 should probably make some adjustments to the `prepare_item_for_database()`
 method to not set the `edit_date` property if the two dates are the same.
 Otherwise, just PUTing back the received response will cause the internal
 `post_date_gmt` field to be updated and not remain as `0000....`.

 In the current UI it does not appear to be possible to go back to a "date
 floating" state. However, @mnelson4 brought up that it appears that you
 can reset back to that state in the [Calypso
 UI](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tDB68iNGFZUfJ0cWmklKTJqpCSg3w1uE/view?usp=sharing).
 Do we want to support this? @danielbachhuber mentioned that this field
 would be `readonly` which to me indicates we shouldn't. If we wanted to,
 though, we could support setting the `date` to `null`.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/39953#comment:25>
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