Meta box reordering does not save in user preferences

[peterwilsoncc]

Description

Originally reported as WP#52818 by wordpress.org user terraling

Post edit screens with metaboxes allow for drag and drop re-ordering.

This worked up to WordPress 5.6.2, but stopped working in WP 5.7, though it continues to work if you use the Classic Editor to edit posts rather than the block editor.

When re-ordering the metaboxes, an ajax update with the action 'meta-box-order' occurs, and this reports a succesful response both in the working and non-working cases, so it appears as if updating the metabox order works.

But, when the page is reloaded, the metaboxes are displayed in an unchanged order.

At the moment this is on the WP 5.7.1 milestone but please let me know if this isn't possible.

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

1. Create a legacy meta box with this code in a plugin https://gist.github.com/peterwilsoncc/65e80a277a1ac1d1d700502638d80fb3
2. Create a new post
3. Enable the custom fields panel
4. You should see two meta boxes at the bottom of the screen
5. Reordeer the two meta boxes, either by dragging and dropping or clicking the buttons
6. Refresh the editor
7. Observe the two meta boxes are not showing in the user's selected order.

Expected behaviour

At the final step the order should reflect the user's preferences.

Actual behaviour

The order of meta boxes is reset to the default WP order each time the editor is loaded.

@desrosj has determined that the page parameter is been left off the AJAX request to the admin-ajax action meta-box-order.

A git bisect shows it was apparently introduced in this package update during the WP 5.7 cycle WordPress/wordpress-develop@bc40569.

Screenshots or screen recording (optional)

ffs-apple.mov

Code snippet (optional)

WordPress information

• WordPress version: 5.7.0
• Gutenberg version: latest (built from 49c6fb9 )
• Are all plugins except Gutenberg deactivated? Yes
• Are you using a default theme (e.g. Twenty Twenty-One)? Yes, TT1

Device information

• Device: Desktop
• Operating system: macOS 11.2.1
• Browser: Firefox Developer Edition 87

[vlad-timotei]

Most probably, another problem caused by the missing page parameter in the request to the admin-ajax is with closed-postboxes action, resulting in failing to save the closed status of metaboxes. (see this forum topic)

[paaljoachim]

These might be associated:

No way to drag metabox back into sidebar / below content if there are no other metaboxes there
#7960
PR: #25187

Meta box back-compat concurrency.
#10711

Meta boxes: update core styles to match Gutenberg's
#12101

EDIT: 8th April.
This issue might also be associated:
Persist user's editor preferences to database rather than local storage
#15105

[peterwilsoncc]

I've labelled this for backporting and moved in on to the 5.7.x project board.

With WP 5.7.1 RC due later this week, you may wish to bump this to the .2 release. Please advise and I will move WP#52818 accordingly.

[rodrigo-arias]

Hi, is there any chance this will be released before 5.7.2 in the standalone plugin? I am not worried about the metabox ordering, but in my case using ACF, after selecting a taxonomy, the rest of the metaboxes do not respond. Going back to 5.6.3 solves the problem. Thanks

[peterwilsoncc]

@vlad-timotei I've confirmed #30617 fixes both the order and open/close state described in the linked forum post. I can see the post type is included in each of the relevant admin-ajax requests.

[rodrigo-arias]

Hi, thank you for your work here. I have seen that they continue to work on a PR, do they have an ETA of when it will merged? As a workaround I have rollback to 5.6 several sites.