Convert many posts from having a specific meta_key to use a post_format

Question

I have 350 posts that were using a plugin-provided option stored in a meta_key ("custom_post_template", to be precise).

I want to convert these posts to assign them a specific post_format ("gallery").

I could do it one by one, but it's going to take ages (there are 4000+ posts), so i'm looking at a clever SQL query that could do that.

Right now, i have found how to retrieve the 350 posts that were using the old system:

SELECT * 
FROM  `wp_postmeta` 
WHERE  `meta_key` LIKE  'custom_post_template'

But i don't understand where Wordpress keeps track of the post_format-to-post association. What would be the SQL query?

Answer 1

After much reading, i realized that it would be more easily done using the Wordpress API, so i baked out this little script. Simply add it to your theme's functions.php then run it once. When done, remove it.

function convertGalleries($test){
    $galleries = get_posts(array( 'meta_key' => 'custom_post_template', 'post_status' => array( 'any' ),'posts_per_page'=>-1 ));
    if($test){
        return count($galleries);
    }
    $result = array();
    foreach($galleries as $g){
        $result[$g->ID]= set_post_format($g->ID, 'gallery' );
    }
    return $result;
}

$converted = convertGalleries(false);
echo 'result: '.count($converted). ' posts converted: <pre>';
print_r($converted);
exit;