Rule to fire only on first time publish of node

Question

We are using workflow moderation for some content types and sent out emails to the author once a node has been published.

Sometimes we have the case that an author changes a node after he has been published. When this revision gets published we want to send out a different email.

I have tried many different things but I haven't been able to find a way how to determine if this was the first time the node is published or a subsequent publish. Can someone please point me in the right direction how this can be achieved?

Thanks

Answer 1

This is how I would try doing it:

• create a field for the content type named first_publish, boolean, hidden, default value 0
• create a Rule that when that content type is published, as a condition if first_publish is 0, first_publish becomes 1, add email output to user
• create a second Rule that when the content type is published, as a condition if first_publish is 1, send out a different email

This will use a data field as a variable that follows the node - the rules will trigger appropriately depending on the conditions of whether or not the variable is set, giving different outcomes.

Answer 2

I found another way to do this if you don't want to add an extra field to the node.

In Rules add a condition of type "Execute custom PHP code".

Then in the PHP code field add the following:

$times_published = db_query('select count(nid) from node_revision where status = 1 and nid = ' . $node->nid)->fetchField();
return ($times_published < 2);

This checks for the number of published revision entries for that node.