A meta box (in a custom post type) with two different type of fields

Question

I want to make a meta box (in a custom post type) with two different type of fields:

• Text
• and select, (maybe put it in array ?)

and display this meta box with this two fields with a single ID like so:

if ( get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'The_ID', true ) != '' ) {
    echo get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'The_ID', true );
}

Is this possible?

Answer 1

If you save the contents of the two input fields into one post_meta value you are able to call them at once.

In the save_post action

$text = esc_attr( $_POST['text'] );
$select = esc_attr( $_POST['select'] );

// saves the value as "text select"
$combined = trim( sprintf( '%1$s %2$s', $text, $select ) ); 

update_post_meta( $post_id, 'The_ID', $combined );

Get Post Meta

if ( $the_id = get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'The_ID', true ) )
    echo $the_id;

An other way you can do this is by adding all the information in a serialized array and then save this.

In the save_post action

$text = esc_attr( $_POST['text'] );
$select = esc_attr( $_post['select'] );

$combined = serialize( array(
    'text' => $text,
    'select' => $select
) );

update_post_meta( $post_id, 'The_ID', $combined );

Get Post Meta

if ( $the_id = get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'The_ID', true ) )
    $the_id = unserialize( $the_id );

$the_id will contain an array with the values of text and select.