preselected custom fields in custom post type

Question

I have a custom post type called "stock" and each post is going to have a stock_id, stock_name, stock_description and stock_available fields,...I would like to have defaults for these fields so the user doesn't have to load them on each new item. Is there a way?

Answer 1

A simple way to do that would be to use Verve Meta Boxes plugin which lets you define a metabox with a simple UI (no code is needed) and you have an options to set the default value for each field.

Answer 2

Two angles of approach: 1) More user friendly: would be to make a meta box for these custom fields. Your meta box for these custom fields would contain the <input /> elements - you can then put a default value in these, which when the post is saved will be stored.

See add_meta_box for more information.

2) At minimum, you can hook onto the 'save_post' action, and check if there's a value, and if not store that as the meta value:

add_action( 'save_post', 'myplugin_save_postdata' );

function myplugin_save_postdata($post_id)
{
  // verify if this is an auto save routine. 
  // If it is our form has not been submitted, so we dont want to do anything
  if ( defined( 'DOING_AUTOSAVE' ) && DOING_AUTOSAVE ) 
      return;

  // Check permissions
  if ( 'page' == $_POST['post_type'] ) 
  {
    if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_page', $post_id ) )
        return;
  }
  else
  {
     if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_post', $post_id ) )
        return;
  }

  // OK, we're authenticated: we need to find and save the data

  $mydata = $_POST['myplugin_new_field'];

  if (!$mydata)
  {
    // add default value
    $mydata = 'a default value;
  }

  // save the data
  update_post_meta($post_id, 'my_meta_field', $mydata);

  return $mydata;
}