Set Thumbnails via Database

  • ColumbiaWebDev

    (@prfctgdess)


    11 years, 1 month ago

    So I have a ton of old posts that have images attached (via the Media Uploader) to the post content, but don’t have featured images. OF COURSE, my theme wants to use featured images. 🙂

    I have the post_id of each post in my set. I have both the meta_id value of the image for each post and the URL of each image.

    I want to just do a SQL statement/insert/update in my database backend to set all the featured images, but I can’t seem to get it to work. I tried inserting the post_id, meta_key=”_thumbnail_id”, and meta_value=my image ID into the _postmeta table and … nothing. They don’t show up as attached on the front-end. Am I missing a step? Do I need to regenerate thumbnails or something afterward?

    Any insight is greatly appreciated, thanks!

    P.S. I know there have been solutions/ideas posted elsewhere about how to accomplish this with php or wp hooks, etc. I just want to update from the database side if possible…SO much less confusing for me. 🙂

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Chris Huff

    (@brochris)

    11 years, 1 month ago

    So, since no one has offered a SQL solution to this, I thought I may as well offer a PHP solution I use in a plugin I wrote. Just paste it in the functions.php file of your theme.

    // Set the first attached image as the featured image, if there isn't one yet
function set_featured_image($post_id) {

    $post = get_post( $post_id );

    if (get_the_post_thumbnail($post->ID) != '')
    return;

    $images = get_posts(
        array(
            'post_type'      => 'attachment',
            'post_mime_type' => 'image',
            'post_parent'    => $post->ID,
            'posts_per_page' => 1, /* Save memory, only need one */
            )
        );

    require_once( ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/image.php' );

    // Set the first image as the featured image
    if(count($images) > 0){
        set_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, $images[0]->ID );
        }
    }

add_action( 'the_post', 'set_featured_image' );

    Basically, any time the homepage or a post is visited, it checks to make sure there is a featured image set, and if not, sets the first attached image as the featured image.

    Sorry I can’t offer a SQL solution, but this does work.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

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