How to update the db with a default value

• ravenna

• June 9, 2015 at 3:53 am

I manage a site that has 350+ posts. This isn’t a huge number, but its not possible to manually update each one.

I need to create a new field for these posts and I can easily setup a default value for the field.

How can I update all the post_meta db table with the default value without manually opening and saving all the posts?

• John Huebner

• June 9, 2015 at 4:39 am

In most cases it would be much easier to alter the code in your template to check for a value an if it does not exist then show the default.

$value = get_field('my_field');
if ($value === false) {
    $value = 'default_value';
}

To do it the other way, you can:

• create a temporary function that runs on a WP hook
• Do a query that gets all the posts in the post type you want to update
• Loop through all the posts and check the field
• If the field is empty, update the field with the default value

I generally do the former and code my templates to deal with default values because I assume that any field might be empty.

• ravenna

• June 9, 2015 at 6:13 am

Josh,

Thanks for the notes. this helps.