Is it possible to add posts and images (auto resize) for custom post types with a script?

Question

I have a specific need to import many post with featured images into a custom post type. The issue is, I need this to be a script because it runs off of another system that collects all the data. I currently have the custom post types setup and I have the data to be displayed in the custom post type using custom templates to pull and display the data (lists and profile pages).

I would like to be able to add posts manually (I don't see this being difficult) and add a featured thumbnail using WP built in system. I cannot seem to find any data on how to call the image script directly and pass in the images for it to process and return the data I need for the insertion.

Is this possible? Or do I need to just do this all by hand and just add custom fields to each post to have the two thumbnails I need for the pages? I would rather have this go into the database without the custom fields if possible.

Thanks for any light you can shine on this.

Answer 1

use wp_handle_upload to upload the file, wp_insert_attachment to attach it to a post, and add post meta to the post under the key _thumbnail_id to make that attachment a featured image.

Answer 2

It appears it is possible and not too difficult. Here is the code snippet I used. I also added in some checks to prevent duplicated images in the media manager but that code snippet is unique to my needs (I just used a meta key to each attachment and checked for duplicate keys before adding new attachments.)

I hope this is helpful to some.

I was using a URL for the file. It's easy to change this to work off a locale file.

Save Image to Media Manager

/**
 * Saves image to the media manager
 * @param int $post_id
 * @param string $file
 * @param string $desc
 * @return int false on error 
 */
function addFileToMediaManager($post_id, $file, $desc = '') {
    // Download file to temp location
    $tmp = download_url($file);

    // Set variables for storage
    // fix file filename for query strings
    $file_array = array();
    preg_match('/[^\?]+\.(jpg|JPG|jpe|JPE|jpeg|JPEG|gif|GIF|png|PNG)/', $file, $matches);
    $file_array['name'] = basename($matches[0]);
    $file_array['tmp_name'] = $tmp;

    // If error storing temporarily, unlink
    if (is_wp_error($tmp)) {
        @unlink($file_array['tmp_name']);
        $file_array['tmp_name'] = '';
    }

    // do the validation and storage stuff
    $attached_id = media_handle_sideload($file_array, $post_id, $desc);
    // If error storing permanently, unlink
    if (is_wp_error($attached_id)) {
        @unlink($file_array['tmp_name']);
        wp_delete_post($post_id, true);
        return false;
    }

    return $attached_id;
}

Once you have the attachement ID and the post ID just call:

set_post_thumbnail($post_id, $attached_id);