Why does WordPress create two transients with the same name when I specify timeout value?

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Why WordPress creates two transients: Because the first transient with timeout in the name, is used for storing the expiration you set for your transient (but the stored value is a UNIX timestamp, not simply the value you passed like 3600) so that WordPress knows when to delete your transient. As for the second one, it stores the actual transient value that you passed to set_transient(), i.e. the second parameter.

$key = 'mytransientprefix_key';

set_transient( $key, 'value', 3600 );
// That will create two options:
// _transient_timeout_mytransientprefix_key and
// _transient_mytransientprefix_key

var_dump(
    get_option( '_transient_timeout_' . $key ),
    get_option( '_transient_' . $key )
);
// Sample output: int(1611143902) string(5) "value"

So the value of the “timeout” transient shouldn’t be value — try the above code and see how it goes?

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