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Ajax: Improve sanitization and screen state in dashboard widget updates.#11661

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liaisontw:fix/65054-dashboard-widget-ajax-sanitization
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Ajax: Improve sanitization and screen state in dashboard widget updates.#11661
liaisontw wants to merge 1 commit intoWordPress:trunkfrom
liaisontw:fix/65054-dashboard-widget-ajax-sanitization

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Description
This PR improves the security and reliability of dashboard widget updates via AJAX.

Input Sanitization: Adds sanitize_key() to both pagenow and widget parameters in wp_ajax_dashboard_widgets(). This ensures that only valid keys are processed, preventing potential path traversal or unexpected input issues.

Consistent Global State: Explicitly calls set_current_screen( $_GET['pagenow'] ) before processing the widget logic. This is crucial because, in an AJAX context, the global screen state might be uninitialized or polluted by other global variables (like $post), which can cause certain dashboard widgets (especially those relying on RSS feeds) to fail or behave inconsistently.

These changes ensure that the AJAX request environment closely mirrors a standard dashboard page load, improving compatibility with various WordPress environments and preventing common failures in PHPUnit testing environments where global state pollution is frequent.

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/65054

Use of AI Tools
AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): Gemini
Model(s): Gemini 3 Flash
Used for: Assisted in debugging the PHPUnit test case, specifically regarding output buffering (ob_start) issues and WPAjaxDieException handling within the WP_Ajax_UnitTestCase framework. The final implementation and test logic were reviewed and manually adjusted by me to fit WordPress Core standards.

This Pull Request is for code review only. Please keep all other discussion in the Trac ticket. Do not merge this Pull Request. See GitHub Pull Requests for Code Review in the Core Handbook for more details.

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The following accounts have interacted with this PR and/or linked issues. I will continue to update these lists as activity occurs. You can also manually ask me to refresh this list by adding the props-bot label.

Core Committers: Use this line as a base for the props when committing in SVN:

Props liaison.

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Test using WordPress Playground

The changes in this pull request can previewed and tested using a WordPress Playground instance.

WordPress Playground is an experimental project that creates a full WordPress instance entirely within the browser.

Some things to be aware of

  • All changes will be lost when closing a tab with a Playground instance.
  • All changes will be lost when refreshing the page.
  • A fresh instance is created each time the link below is clicked.
  • Every time this pull request is updated, a new ZIP file containing all changes is created. If changes are not reflected in the Playground instance,
    it's possible that the most recent build failed, or has not completed. Check the list of workflow runs to be sure.

For more details about these limitations and more, check out the Limitations page in the WordPress Playground documentation.

Test this pull request with WordPress Playground.

@liaisontw liaisontw force-pushed the fix/65054-dashboard-widget-ajax-sanitization branch from 8383688 to 0e71ac2 Compare April 28, 2026 05:08
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@apermo apermo left a comment

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lgtm

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2 participants