hierarchical post_types — can someone explain?

  • I posted in the How-to & Troubleshooting forum a few days ago and didn’t get a response, but I think I have some fairly complex ideas floating around and either I don’t know the right verbage to use to ask the right questions or I really don’t understand what I want. ??

    I hope someone can explain hierarchical post_types to me — how they are connected in the DB, for example — and how to set them up in the functions.php.

    I mean, the examples of post_types I found in the Codex all set hierarchy to false, and I know there is a built in function to check if a post_type is hierarchical, but I’ve found nothing to explain what happens when you set one to true and how to create a parent-child relationship between them.

    I’m not certain post_types can work like this, so please correct me if I’m wrong. I would like a parent type and three child types. The parent type is a website bookmark post_type while the other three are really add-ons. The child types would “inherit” the parent type info, meaning that the parent type post is only stored once but any time any of them are queried, the parent + the child queried is returned. That’s my logic, anyway. I just don’t know how to set it up, if I’m even right.

    bookmark (parent) – title, article author, (custom field), url (custom field), summary (post body), poster (post author), tags

    review – reviewer (post author), review (post body), tags, comments

    favorite – list owner (post author), notes (post body), tags

    to-read – list owner (post author), notes (post body), tags

    I am using the latest versions of WordPress, BuddyPress, Gravity Forms (though I haven’t quite figured that out either) and Suffusion as you can see at https://j2-spn.exit-23.net.

    If anyone can explain how to make this work, I would be extremely grateful. Thank you in advance!

    J

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • A hierarchical post_type means that the posts of that type each have a hierarchical structure, just like standard pages. It does not permit you to create child-parent relationships between types. Perhaps you want a custom hierarchical taxonomy (having entries review, favorite, to-read) which applies to your bookmark custom post_type. I have done a few sites along those lines; it takes plenty of planning and careful reading of the Codex to get everything working right.

    Thread Starter jennylynneh

    (@jennylynneh)

    I thought taxonomy is more like a tag or a category, something for organizing, flagging, sorting or grouping. See how confused I am about these structures?

    I’ve actually been putting more thought to how I think these bookmarks should work — I’m a programmer, just not familiar with WordPress’ terminology, database structure, or even programming standards. (This might be too mainstream for me. :P)

    So, what you’re saying is a post is not, in fact, a “record” at all, which is how I think of it.

    I “assumed” a record contained:

    • post id
    • post title
    • post author
    • excerpt
    • content
    • categories
    • tags
    • status
    • post date
    • custom fields
    • etc

    Thus, in my mind, a custom post_type, would be the creation of a variant “record” such as:

    bookmark_link

    • post id
    • post title
    • bookmark url
    • bookmark author
    • post date
    • categories
    • tags
    • status
    • fav_count
    • bookmark_count
    • rec_count
    • to_read_count
    • custom fields
    • etc

    Then have a second post_type perhaps which is
    bookmark

    • post_id
    • parent_post_id
    • post author
    • content (summary)
    • rec/review
    • categories
    • tags
    • status
    • favorite_flag
    • to_read_flag
    • rec_flag_
    • custom fields
    • etc

    or I’m thinking about it all wrong…

    I would love to talk to you about how you’ve done this and see the sites you’ve done. I’ve been working on this for over a month trying to work out how to handle this. (And I’d really rather be writing in my spare time…in fact I’m going to miss my deadline if I keep going this way. :P)

    J

    Thread Starter jennylynneh

    (@jennylynneh)

    After giving the whole thing more thought — gotta love the pitch dark commute now that Daylight Savings is over — I can see the benefits of using separate taxonomies for the Fic Author and the Bookmark URL.

    A Fic Author can be associated with more than one story and, thus, more than one URL. As such, it needs to be a one-to-many functional field. Fic Authors already in the list can be selected or a new one can be added.

    Making a Bookmark URL its own taxonomy allows post authors to each assign his or her own variation of the Title (even though my inner standardization nerd is balking at that) — making it more meaningful or correct or whatever. It makes the actual bookmark more flexible, more searchable.

    Though I wonder if a function can be written so when a post author uses a bookmarklet on his or her browser on a website, the URL can check the existing posts for a Title and Fic Author and “suggest” one at random or failing to find one, pull in that information the way delicious does?

    J.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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