Cleaner way to access custom fields in code?

by

I have 15 custom fields that I use to generate reviews for my site. Currently I access each field like this:

//Buy or rent, type home, price
                 if ( get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_home_type', true) ) {
                    echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_home_type', true) . " - ";
                 } 
                 if ( get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_buy_or_rent', true) ) {
                    echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_buy_or_rent', true) . " for ";
                 }
                 if ( get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_purchase_price', true) ) {
                    echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_purchase_price', true);
                 } elseif ( get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_rent', true) ) {
                    echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_rent', true);
                 }

Is there a better way to do this? I tried using get_post_custom but it seems to mainly deal with arrays, not single items. I could also declare all the variables ahead of time, such as $rent, $purchase_price. I would like to hear any advice!

2 Answers
2

I would write a function to handle the monotony of this task.

function my_print_meta($id, $key, $alternate="")
{
    if($value = get_post_meta($id, $key, true))
        echo $value;
    else
        echo $alternate;
}

Notice in the function that I only call get_post_meta once and store the value in a variable so that two separate database queries don’t need to be made. With this function set, I would then call it in a template file using:

my_print_meta(get_the_ID(), 'survey_home_type', 'No Home Type');

Now, realize that this function, with the way that it manages the “alternate” text might not work for your template, but this is just an idea to get you going

Leave a Comment