Remove post meta keys

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I’ve got a lot of post meta keys that I no longer use, and I’m trying to work out how to delete them so they no longer show in the custom fields list in the admin panel.

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This code will delete the post meta values:

function hp_batch_delete_post_meta(){

    // get array of all post ids
    $post_ids = get_posts( array(
        'numberposts'   => -1,
        'fields'        => 'ids',
        'post_type'     => array('ad_upload','post', 'page'),
        'post_status'   => array('publish', 'auto-draft', 'trash', 'pending', 'draft'),
    ) );

    // remove post meta for each post
    foreach( $post_ids as $post_id ) { 
        delete_post_meta($post_id, 'my_postmeta_key_1');
        delete_post_meta($post_id, 'my_postmeta_key_2');
        delete_post_meta($post_id, 'my_postmeta_key_3');
    }
}
add_action('init', 'hp_batch_delete_post_meta');

But I would like to completely remove the meta keys too so they don’t show in that admin list.

Any help appreciated.

3 Answers
3

I found this from just a Google search (Source)

You have to change met value keys as you want. However, it is highly recommend to take a DB backup before running this code.

<?php
function delete_useless_post_meta() {
   global $wpdb;
   $table = $wpdb->prefix.'postmeta';
   $wpdb->delete ($table, array('meta_key' => '_edit_last'));
   $wpdb->delete ($table, array('meta_key' => '_edit_lock'));
   $wpdb->delete ($table, array('meta_key' => '_wp_old_slug')); }
add_action('wp_logout','delete_useless_post_meta');
?>

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