Set category to a custom post type automatically

any ideas to get me on the right track here?

So is this just not possible in wordpress? You can not set categories automatically?

Are these forums active?

$category_ids = array(4, 5, 6);
wp_set_object_terms( $post_id, $category_ids, 'category');

I have no idea if this would work, I’m guessing here, but in that array, you would put the categry ID of the categories you want automatically assigned

instead of $post_id you would use the name you registered your custom post type as, for instance, I have a custom post type of Products, I registered as ve_products here
register_post_type( 've_products'

so for me, if I wanted category 9 assigned to my Products category I would try:

$category_ids = array(9);
wp_set_object_terms( 've_products', $category_ids, 'category');

again, I’m just thinking out loud here, I’ve never tried this, but it’s how I would experiment

Thanks so much for the explanation!
I wan on the thinking that, and now I dont know why I was, but that the cat array was the cat I wanted to assign, but I had to put the id of the posts, and as I did not know what each posts Id would be, i couldnt get it to work.

Thanks again. I just needed to read a simplified version of what the code was doing.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Function_Reference/wp_set_object_terms
hopefully it works for ya, here’s the codex page explaining the function

I read that, and then googled wp_set_object_terms a bit to try to figure it out

Thanks again

did you get this working godonholiday?

I am trying to do the same thing but it seems wp_set_object_terms will only take a postID.

holy shit, i just figured it out… by piecing together other bits i have found I compiled this to go in functions.php.

function add_housecategory_automatically($post_ID) {
	global $wpdb;
	if(!wp_is_post_revision($post_ID)) {
	$housecat = array (4);
	wp_set_object_terms( $post_ID, $housecat, 'category');
	}
}
add_action('publish_houses', 'add_housecategory_automatically');

in this example my post_type is ‘houses’. The key is the hook in add_action should be publish_your-custom-post-type

the $houscat array is the categories (separated by commas) that you want assigned. This function will assign the category when published and will ignore revisions.

I used More Types https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/more-types/ to setup my post_types and one pleasant surprise was that when I diasbled the category taxonomy box from the post type in question, the category was still set and work in a query. However, and this is a big however, I am not sure if this was only because when I initially set up my post types, I had category enabled. You will have to test but I think it would work regardless.

I found a ton of threads about this issue so I hope everyone who needs this finds it.

Thanks guys, this had been really useful! Also note that the “get_sidebar()” function will not print out the default category being used by a custom post type, until you create a new post with the default CPT category.

glad to help

PS you might need to allow empty categories to show if you want the above sidebar issue to happen.

I thought I’d share a tweak that only adds a category if the post doesn’t have a category yet:

function add_stiwti_category_automatically($post_ID) {
	global $wpdb;
	if(!has_term('','category',$post_ID)){
		$cat = array(4);
		wp_set_object_terms($post_ID, $cat, 'category');
	}
}
add_action('publish_stiwti', 'add_stiwti_category_automatically');

mike, is there a way to tweak that code so it only adds the category if it is a certain post type? I’ve got a post type “Sketchbook” that I want to always be in the “sketchbook” category.

function add_sketchbook_category_automatically($post_ID) {
	global $wpdb;
	if(!has_term('','category',$post_ID)){
		$cat = array(4);
		wp_set_object_terms($post_ID, $cat, 'category');
	}
}
add_action('publish_sketchbook', 'add_sketchbook_category_automatically');

The important difference is that the action is hooked to ‘publish_sketchbook’ rather than publish_stiwti (which was my content type name)

Awesome, thanks so much. That was the bit I was totally missing. For some reason thought that your content type was a wordpress standard term that I wasn’t familiar with.