Custom Post Type Mapping with MLA

Thanks so much for your positive feedback and the extensive thoughts on building your application. I can certainly appreciate the learning curve associated with WordPress itself and complex plugins like MLA.

I am not very familiar with Elementor but I can offer some perspective that you might find useful. You wrote about “creating a Custom Post Type of “Images” “. That seems like an unnecessary complication; WordPress Media Library Items are in many ways the first custom post type, the prototype for the more general custom post types introduces back in WordPress 3.0. That’s the thought that led me to create MLA, to make “attachments” (as they were known back then) a more equal complement to posts and pages with features like taxonomy support, the Quick and Bulk Edit areas, etc.

You wrote “I just can’t query the media attachment pages like a post type.” A more WordPress-like to think of this is querying the Media Library Items and constructing pages to display the results. The WordPress [gallery] shortcode (one of the first shortcodes ever developed) does this, and MLA’s [mla_gallery] shortcodes builds on that idea. You can use [mla_gallery] to filter the Media Library by taxonomy terms, custom field values and many other selectors. You can combine [mla_gallery] with many other gallery display plugins/shortcodes such as Photonic Gallery & Lightbox or the excellent Justified Image Grid for more sophisticated display formats.

Instead of creating an additional layer of complexity with another custom post type, you will be well-served to adapt the existing model of Media Library items and work with them directly. It looks like you have already managed to map image metadata to Media Library items and associated taxonomies. You can either use your theme’s template files to modify Media Attachment pages or simply create regular WordPress pages and use shortcodes to populate them with images and metadata.

You asked “do you offer private consultation on projects?” I regret that I do not have the time required to work on individual development projects. You can find many skilled WordPress consultants and developers to work with, and I am happy to help you and them any help I can with applying MLA as part of a solution that works for your application. Thanks for your understanding.

I will leave this topic unresolved for now in case you have further questions regarding the above suggestions. Thanks for your interest in the plugin.

Thanks for getting back to me.

So yeah I’m aware of the redundancy of creating an “Image” Post Type. I tried not going that route.

I’ve been able to theme a “Media” template for single image, and display EXIF ect. I can’t figure out how to create enable the ability to create an archive page of those images though (i.e. treat those attachments like full fledged posts)

This was my way of hacking through the problem to get my site working. By making a CPT, I was able to make an Archive of Images, and Elementor can see those images like a custom post type.

Elementor is a WYSIWYG builder that uses widgets on the front end for different plugins/loops. I implement their “Posts” Widget Slider as my main navigation/browsing tool for all of my posts, articles and collections, and want to use it for browsing my individual images as well. I can do this all via GUI and no coding.

https://docs.elementor.com/article/101-posts

Check out my page for an Idea on how I use them
https://www.jordaninglee.com/collections

So getting back to my issue at hand. I’m not understanding how to implement the gallery shortcode for my need. I’m not trying to display galleries right now. I’m ultimately trying to trying to pull the image as a post into a slider that a user can then click and visit the images “post” page (among other things by treating the image as a post)

Does my use case make sense? I know it’s not directly related to MLA, but if I can’t figure out how to achieve want I need from the Media attachments and Elementor, then my only solution is the redundant Image CPT and figuring out how to map the Taxonomy from the uploaded Media to the Image CPT.

Also David – I’m curious if I could piggy back off the plugin I’m using to auto create a post to somehow get those taxonomies to copy over?

It’s called “Bulk Images to Posts” and naturally the author doesn’t maintain it. here is the code:

<?php
/*
* Plugin Name: Images to Posts
* Plugin URI: https://www.adambn.com/images-to-posts
* Text Domain: images-to-posts
* Domain Path: /lang
* Description: Bulk upload images to automatically create posts or pages from them
* Version: 3.7
* Author: Adam Barr-Neuwirth (slugiscool99), Alastair (mezzaninegold)
* Author URI: https://www.adambn.com
* License: GPLv2 or later
* License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
*/

add_action('plugins_loaded', 'bip_load_textdomain');
function bip_load_textdomain() {
	load_plugin_textdomain( 'bulk-images-to-posts', false, dirname( plugin_basename(__FILE__) ) . '/lang/' );
}

require_once( 'includes/bip-category-walker.php' );
require_once( 'includes/bip-settings.php' );

add_action( 'admin_init', 'bip_admin_init' );
 
   function bip_admin_init() {
       /* Register our stylesheet and javascript. */
       wp_register_style( 'bip-css', plugins_url('css/style.css', __FILE__) );
       wp_register_script( 'bip-js', plugins_url('js/script.js', __FILE__), array( 'jquery' ), '', true );
       wp_register_script( 'dropzone-js', plugins_url('js/dropzone.js', __FILE__), array( 'jquery' ), '', true );     
   }   
   function bip_admin_styles() {
       wp_enqueue_style( 'bip-css' );
       wp_enqueue_script( 'bip-js' );
       wp_enqueue_script( 'dropzone-js' );
	   wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery-form' );
	   wp_enqueue_style( 'dashicons' );
   }

   function bip_admin_notice(){ ?>
    <div class="notice notice-error error is-dismissible">
        <p><?php _e( 'Bulk Images to Posts','bulk-images-to-posts') ?>: <a href="<?php echo site_url('wp-admin/admin.php?page=bip-settings-page'); ?>"><?php _e('Please update your settings before uploading!', 'bulk-images-to-posts' ); ?></a></p>
    </div>
  
<?php }
$bipUpdated = get_option('bip_updated');
if ( empty($bipUpdated) ) {
	add_action('admin_notices', 'bip_admin_notice');
} 

// create plugin settings menu
add_action('admin_menu', 'bip_create_menu');

// Used in category walker
function bip_in_array_check($needle, $haystack, $strict = false) {
    foreach ($haystack as $item) {
        if (($strict ? $item === $needle : $item == $needle) || (is_array($item) && bip_in_array_check($needle, $item, $strict))) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

function bip_create_menu() {

    // create new top-level menu
    global $bip_admin_page;
    $bip_admin_page = add_menu_page(__('Bulk Images to Posts Uploader','bulk-images-to-posts'), __('Bulk','bulk-images-to-posts'), 'manage_options', 'bulk-images-to-post','bip_upload_page','dashicons-images-alt2');
    // create submenu pages
    add_submenu_page( 'bulk-images-to-post', __('Bulk Images to Post - Upload','bulk-images-to-posts'), __('Uploader','bulk-images-to-posts'), 'manage_options', 'bulk-images-to-post');
	$bip_submenu_page = add_submenu_page( 'bulk-images-to-post', __('Bulk Images to Post - Settings','bulk-images-to-posts'), __('Settings','bulk-images-to-posts'), 'manage_options', 'bip-settings-page', 'bip_settings_page');
    // call register settings function
    add_action( 'admin_init', 'bip_register_settings' );
    // enqueue scripts
    add_action( 'admin_print_styles-' . $bip_admin_page, 'bip_admin_styles' );
    add_action( 'admin_print_styles-' . $bip_submenu_page, 'bip_admin_styles' );
     
}

	/*
	* Register Setting - Needs updating to an array of options. 
	*/
function bip_register_settings() {
    register_setting( 'bip-upload-group', 'bip_terms' );
    register_setting( 'bip-settings-group', 'bip_updated' );
    register_setting( 'bip-settings-group', 'bip_post_type' );
    register_setting( 'bip-settings-group', 'bip_image_title' );
    register_setting( 'bip-settings-group', 'bip_post_status' );
    register_setting( 'bip-settings-group', 'bip_taxonomy' );
    register_setting( 'bip-settings-group', 'bip_image_content' );
    register_setting( 'bip-settings-group', 'bip_image_content_size' );
}

	/*
	* The main upload page 
	*/
function bip_upload_page() { ?>

<div class="grid">
	<div class="whole unit">

	<h2><?php _e('Bulk Images to Posts - Uploader','bulk-images-to-posts'); ?></h2>
	<p><?php _e('Please use the settings page to configure your uploads','bulk-images-to-posts'); ?>
		<a href="<?php echo site_url('wp-admin/admin.php?page=bip-settings-page') ?>">
			<?php _e('Click here','bulk-images-to-posts'); ?>
		</a>
	</p>
	</div>
</div>
<div id="poststuff" class="grid">
        <div class="one-third unit">
			<form method="post" action="options.php" id="bip-upload-form">
			    <?php settings_fields( 'bip-upload-group' ); ?>
			    <?php do_settings_sections( 'bip-upload-group' ); ?>
			
					

				    <?php
$selected_taxs = get_option('bip_taxonomy');
if (!empty($selected_taxs)) {
foreach ($selected_taxs as $selected_tax) { ?>

					<?php
					$selected_cats = get_option('bip_terms');
				    $walker = new Walker_Bip_Terms( $selected_cats, $selected_tax ); ?>
				    <div class="postbox">
					  	<div title="Click to toggle" class="handlediv"><br></div>
					  	<h3 class="hndle"><span><?php echo $selected_tax ?></span></h3>
					    <div class="inside">
						    <div class="buttonbox">
						    <p class="uncheck"><input type="button" class="check button button-primary" value="Uncheck All" /></p>
						    <?php submit_button(); ?>
						    </div>
						    <div class="categorydiv">
							    <div class="tabs-panel">
								    <div class="checkbox-container">
									    <ul class="categorychecklist ">
											<?php 
										    $args = array(
										    'descendants_and_self'  => 0,
										    'selected_cats'         => $selected_cats,
										    'popular_cats'          => false,
										    'walker'                => $walker,
										    'taxonomy'              => $selected_tax,
										    'checked_ontop'         => false ); ?>
											<?php wp_terms_checklist( 0, $args ); ?>
									    </ul>
								    </div>
							    </div>
						    </div>
					    </div>
				    </div>

				    <?php } } ?>

			</form>
			<div id="saveResult"></div>
</div>
<div class="two-thirds unit">
	<div class="postbox">
		<div title="Click to toggle" class="handlediv"><br></div><h3 class="hndle"><span><?php _e('Images','bulk-images-to-posts'); ?></span></h3>
			<?php include 'includes/bip-dropzone.php';?>
		</div>
	</div>
</div>
<?php } ?>

Thanks for your additional information and for the links to related pages; very helpful.

Regarding the “archive page” issue, this has come up before. You can find more information and solutions in these earlier topics:

/attachment_category/ archive pages

Problem with permalinks

As you will see there, WordPress does not support “attachments” in archive pages. The earlier topics suggest several solutions. That said, I can understand your preference for creating a custom post type that Elementor can use in a variety of ways. The video you posted a link to talks about the “image” for the posts; I assume this refers to the WordPress Featured Image for the posts. If that’s true, you may be able to use one of the MLA example plugins to copy terms from your existing Media Library items to the custom posts. This will work if 1) the images are set as Featured Images for your custom post type and 2) if the images are “attached” to your custom post type.

If you want to experiment with the existing tools you can easily install the example plugin. Navigate to the Settings/Media library Assistant Documentation tab and click the “Example Plugins” button. You will see a submenu that lists all the example plugins and gives you a “one-click” action for installing them.

Type “fixit” into the search box and click “Search Plugins”. You are looking for “MLA Insert Fixit” plugin. Find that plugin and hover over the title in the left-most column. Click the “Install” rollover action, then go to the WordPress Plugins/Installed Plugins submenu and activate it.

Once that’s done, navigate to the Tools/Insert Fixit screen and scroll down to the “Attach Media Library items” tools. You can click the “Attach Featured in” tool to apply it to all of your Featured Images, or you can use the “First Attachment ID” and “Last Attachment ID” text boxes at the top of the screen to test it out on one or a few of your Media Library items.

Once all of your images have been attached to their custom post types, navigate to the Tools/Insert Fixit screen and scroll down to the “Copy attached Media Library item values to Parent Post/Page” tool. Set your “taxonomy” to “attachment_category” or “attachment_tag” and the Parent taxonomy to “post_tag” or “category”. You can click the “Item Terms to Parent” tool to apply it to all of your posts/pages, or you can use the “First Attachment ID” and “Last Attachment ID” text boxes at the top of the screen to test it out on one or a few of your Media Library items.

If you do give that a try, let me know how it works for you. As far as I can see from reading the code, both of those tools should work on a custom post type.

Regarding your last question, I have downloaded a copy of “Images to Posts” and I will investigate further to see if that plugin can be adapted to perform the taxonomy term copying during the upload process. I will post an update when I have progress to report.

I have done some work on my copy of the “Images to Posts” plugin and have added the logic required to copy taxonomy terms from the Media Library item to the parent post. The new code is modeled after that used in the MLA Insert Fixit “Item Terms to Parent” tool.

First, note that the plugin does attach the image to its corresponding post, so the first step in my earlier instructions is not required. You can omit running the “Attach Media Library items”/“Attach Featured in” tool.

Here is the updated code to add to the “Images to Posts” plugin. It goes at the end of the /images-to-posts/includes/bip-dropzone.php file right after the set_post_thumbnail( $the_post_id , $attachment_id); statement:

        set_post_thumbnail( $the_post_id , $attachment_id);

        if ( is_wp_error( $attachment_id ) ) {
            _e('There was an error uploading the image.','bulk-images-to-posts');
        } else {
            // Copy attachment terms to parent post

            // $append = true to add terms, false to replace all terms
            $append = true;

            $taxonomy_assignments = array(
                'attachment_category' => array ( 'name' => 'category', 'hierarchical' => true ),
                'attachment_tag' => array ( 'name' => 'post_tag', 'hierarchical' => false )
            );

            foreach ( $taxonomy_assignments as $item_taxonomy => $parent_taxonomy ) {
                $attachment_terms = wp_get_object_terms( $attachment_id, $item_taxonomy );

                $parent_terms = array();
                foreach ( $attachment_terms as $term ) {
                    if ( $parent_taxonomy['hierarchical'] ) {
                        $parent_term = term_exists( $term->name, $parent_taxonomy['name'] );
    
                        if ( $parent_term !== 0 && $parent_term !== NULL ) {
                            $parent_terms[ $parent_term['term_id'] ] = (integer) $parent_term['term_id'];
                        } else {
                            $parent_term = wp_insert_term( $term->name, $parent_taxonomy['name'] );
                            if ( ( ! is_wp_error( $parent_term ) ) && isset( $parent_term['term_id'] ) ) {
                                $parent_terms[ $parent_term['term_id'] ] = (integer) $parent_term['term_id'];
                            }
                        }
                    } else {
                        $parent_terms[ $term->term_taxonomy_id ] = $term->name;
                    }
                } // foreach term

                wp_set_object_terms( $the_post_id, $parent_terms, $parent_taxonomy['name'], $append );
            } // foreach taxonomy pair

            // The bip was uploaded successfully!
            _e('Success','bulk-images-to-posts');
        }

You can modify the $taxonomy_assignments array to customize the taxonomies you want to copy from and to.

I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you have any problems or further questions regarding the above code or the suggestions in my previous post. Thanks, and good luck with the rest of your application.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by David Lingren.

Wow David – you are the man! Thank you so much. Works just as I need! So my next question – how would one go about running this plugin/copying taxonomy to an already uploaded media?

Also Here’s what I added to your code if you’re interested:

  $taxonomy_assignments = array(
                'attachment_category' => array ( 'name' => 'attachment_category', 'hierarchical' => true ),
                'attachment_tag' => array ( 'name' => 'attachment_tag', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'focal_length' => array ( 'name' => 'focal_length', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'camera' => array ( 'name' => 'camera', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'iso' => array ( 'name' => 'iso', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'lens' => array ( 'name' => 'lens', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'shutter_speed' => array ( 'name' => 'shutter_speed', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'location' => array ( 'name' => 'location', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'region' => array ( 'name' => 'region', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'lens' => array ( 'name' => 'lens', 'hierarchical' => false ),
				'aperture' => array ( 'name' => 'aperture', 'hierarchical' => false )

Thanks for confirming that the code I posted was helpful. Thanks as well for posting the additions you made. I want to make sure I understand what you’ve done.

First, though, you asked “how would one go about running this plugin/copying taxonomy to an already uploaded media?” That’s the part I covered in my earlier post about using the “MLA Insert Fixit” example plugin to copy all the terms for existing item/post pairs. Did those instructions make sense?

The code I posted works for copying taxonomy terms assigned to the Media Library items to terms assigned to their parent post/page. The number and specificity of the taxonomies you’ve added, e.g., camera, iso, are somewhat unusual. To be clear, each of the entries you’ve added to the array represent actual taxonomies, and these taxonomies are registered for both Media Library items (post_type “attachments”) and your custom post type?

The more conventional approach is to store information such as lens (which is in your array twice, by the way) is to create a Custom Field for them. I suspect your taxonomy-based approach lets you more easily create “archive pages” and so forth; is that right?

Just checking…

Hi David – I’ll look through the MLA Insert Fixit this evening and see if i can make it happen.

And RE: To be clear, each of the entries you’ve added to the array represent actual taxonomies, and these taxonomies are registered for both Media Library items (post_type “attachments”) and your custom post type?

Yup!

I’ve created custom taxonomies for all my image metadata that is shared between my custom posts types, mainly “Images”, “Collections”, and now “Media” – so I can map everything to “Images”. My Theory is I can create a central archive where I can easily pull in any of those CPTs in, and have “relatable” metadata to create sliders/galleries at will in Elementor.

MY reasoning to have these three taxonomies is follows. (I’m by no means a UX/UI/Coder whatsoever – I’m a photographer and want to build more than just a gallery of images.)

Each “Image” post/page includes it’s meta data, descriptions ect along with other custom fields (Techniques used, what I learned ect). There is also an archive of “Images” that can be sorted and browsed by the custom taxonomies – among other things. You could in theory call each of these term groups “galleries” if you will, but I wanted something more rich than that.

So a Collection as a “post type” that includes a selection of “Images”, with copy/stories/ect. attached talking about the collection like a portfolio. By having shared taxonomies between “Images” and “Collections” I can easily combine different queries of those on a page.

I’m also sharing some custom taxonomies with my “Products” as well, because really.. whats the difference between an “Image” and a a “Product”? They just display different meta (Image info vs product/sale info) to different users. My plan is to combine/share as much as possible as I do basic self fulfillment printing services.

I might be going about it wrong, it’s just how I figured out how to crack the nut… but trust me when I say… the amount I actually know about the back end of what happening is laughable lol. MLA and your help has been a godsend to say the least haha.

Hi David – just wanted to follow up.

So using the MLA Insert Fixit – I was able to successfully copy terms from Media to my Custom Post type. Awesome!

Now – could you point me to where I may be able to hard code all my taxonomies similar to the “Images to Posts” fix you wrote? I’d love to be able to just copy it all in one go vs type in each taxonomy individually in the plugin.

My next question – what about custom fields? Is there anyway to adapt this fixit, or the Images to Posts to also copying any custom fields I may have?

For example, I want to include things like Captured Date, Processed Date, Revision Number on each of my “Images” and and corresponding Media. Now of course I could just make custom taxonomies and treat them like everything else, but naturally Dates and information like this better suited for custom fields.

Thanks for your update and you patience in awaiting a response. I have updated the MLA Insert Fixit example plugin to address your suggestions. The updated example plugin includes two enhancements:

• Allow multiple taxonomy pairs for the “Item terms to parent” and “Parent terms to item” tools.
• A new “Item fields to parent” tool lets you copy custom field values from attached items to their parent post/page.

All three tools now allow you to specify multiple taxonomies/fields at one time. You wrote “could you point me to where I may be able to hard code all my taxonomies similar to the “Images to Posts” fix you wrote?” If you look for the string //Hard-code additional... in the source code you will find arrays where you can add in taxonomy pairs and custom field names. These will processed in addition to anything you enter through the UI.

The custom field tool had some interesting wrinkles, since a post/page can have multiple attachments and there are several ways to store multiple values in a custom field. I don’t think those considerations apply to your immediate needs but I want to make the example plugin as flexible as I can.

I have uploaded a new MLA Development Version dated 20200313 that includes an updated “MLA Insert Fixit” example plugin. You can find step-by-step instructions for using the Development Version in this earlier topic:

PHP Warning on media upload with Polylang

Once the Development Version is installed you must update and verify the example plugin. Navigate to the Settings/Media library Assistant Documentation tab and click the “Example Plugins” button. Type “insert” in the text box and click “Search Plugins” to filter the table.

You are looking for the “MLA Insert Fixit” plugin. Find that plugin and hover over the title in the left-most column. Click the “Update” rollover action, then go to the WordPress Plugins/Installed Plugins submenu and verify the example plugin as you would any other plugin. Make sure you have the latest version, 1.15, installed.

Once the Development Version and updated example plugin are installed and active you can try the new tools. Navigate to the Tools/Insert Fixit screen and scroll to the bottom. You will see the new “Item Fields to Parent” tool with a text box to enter custom field names.

It would be great if you can install the Development Version and updated MLA Insert Fixit plugin and let me know how they work for you. Once you’re happy with the custom field tool I will look at adapting the “Images to Posts” plugin to do something similar. Thanks for inspiring this MLA improvement.