Reply To: Convert an ACF field to taxonomy

• John Huebner

• December 14, 2020 at 1:58 am

There is no easy way to do this. I do not know how the current field is saved but the taxonomy field stores values as a taxonomy ID, and categorizing by this I assume you mean you want to assign the terms to posts in the normal WP way. I can only give you an example. I am unable to give you all the code, a lot of what I am going to give you is just what you need to do.

What I am going to give you is a temporary function that you put in functions PHP an run it by loading every page until you get the “completed” message and then you remove it.

add_action('init', 'convert_field_to_terms');
function convert_field_to_terms() {
  global $post;
  $args = array(
    'post_type' = 'your-post-type',
    'posts_per_page' => -1, // get all
    // get only posts that have not already been updated
    'meta_query' => array(
      'relation' =. 'OR',
      array(
        'key' => 'state_update_complete',
        'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'
      ),
      array(
        'key' => 'state_update_complete',
        'value' => 0
      )
    )
  );
  $query = new WP_Query($args);
  if ($query->have_posts()) {
    while ($query->have_posts()) {
      $query->the_posts();
      // this is where you are going to need to figure out the details

      // get the ACF field value
      // ...
      // get the term that matches the ACF value or 
      // create the term if it does not exists
      // using get_term_by or insert_term()
      // ...
      // use wp_set_object_terms() to add terms to post
      // ...
      // set a meta value so we don't do this again if we need to run it multiple times
      update_post_meta($post->id, 'state_update_complete', '1');
    } // end while posts
  } // end if posts

  // the above loop will time out your site if there are a lot 
  // of posts that need to be updated
  // that means that anything after this point will only happen if
  // all posts are updated
  die('State Update Has Been Completed');
  // once you see the above message you can delete this action

} // end function