WordPress post tag & custom field

Question

I have the site in WordPress where I used the custom fields, but now I want to use that custom field as post tag automatically.

Can anyone have any idea?

Thanks.

Answer 1

As far as I am aware, this isn't possible to do automatically "out of the box". A quick Google and it looks like there are currently no plugins that will do the job for you.

However, I can't see any reason why a plugin couldn't be written to do this. You'll need to use the "save_post" hook, which will run every time a post is saved/updated, check the custom field and apply it as a tag.

Documentation on this particular hook is sparse, but it's mentioned here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference

Answer 2

To convert the old custom fields, you can write a plugin that, on activation, fetches all the posts with your custom field name and converts them to tags with the handy wp_set_post_terms.

First set up a few constants with your field names and post type.

<?php
/**
 * CHANGE THIS! what is your custom field's name?
 */
define( 'WPSE29498_FIELD', 'custom_field_name' );


/**
 * CHANGE THIS! what post type?
 */
define( 'WPSE29498_TYPE', 'post' );

Then the activation hook function:

<?php
register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'wpse29498_field_to_tag' );
function wpse29498_field_to_tag()
{
    $posts = get_posts(
        array(
            'post_type'     => WPSE29498_TYPE,
            'post_status'   => array( 'publish', 'draft', 'pending', 'future' ),
            'numberposts'   => -1,
            'meta_key'      => WPSE29498_FIELD
        )
    );

    if( empty( $posts ) ) return;

    foreach( $posts as $p )
    {
        if( $meta = get_post_meta( $p->ID, WPSE29498_FIELD, true ) )
        {
            wp_set_post_terms( $p->ID, $meta, 'post_tag', true );
        }
    }
}

And finally, you can hook into save_post and see if the custom field value is there. If so, make sure it's not a term already, then insert it if it isn't.

Not sure if this is something you needed or a one time conversion.

<?php
add_action( 'save_post', 'wpse29498_save_post' );
function wpse29498_save_post( $post_id )
{
    if( $meta = get_post_meta( $post_id, WPSE29498_FIELD, true ) )
    {
        // get the current post tag
        $terms = wp_get_object_terms( $p->ID, 'post_tag', 'name' );

        // if our term is already there, bail
        if( in_array( $meta, $terms ) ) return;

        // add the term if not
        wp_set_post_terms( $post_id, $meta, 'post_tag', true );
    }
}

As a plugin.

Answer 3

I ran into a similar question a while ago from someone asking how to automatically add keywords from the All-in-one SEO plugin as post tags (http://www.vidalquevedo.com/how-to-add-tags/#li-comment-62)

After I saw your question, I took that script I wrote and modified it to automatically add custom field values as post tags as well.

Here's the link to the script and post: http://www.vidalquevedo.com/wordpress-how-to-automatically-convert-custom-fields-to-post-tags/

Thanks, and please let me know if that helps!

Vq.