I recently launched a new plugin on the WordPress plugin repository: SuperCPT. SuperCPT is a WordPress Plugin to help developers build insanely easy and attractive custom post types, custom post meta boxes and fields, and custom taxonomies. Install it from the WordPress.org Plugin Repository.

Description

SuperCPT adds object wrappers for Custom Post Types, Custom Taxonomies, and Custom Post Meta “for coders, by coders.” Simply put, SuperCPT:

• DRYs up the Custom Post Type and Custom Taxonomy process (e.g. automatically adds the name to all the labels),
• allows you to set default options for all your Custom Post Types and Taxonomies,
• significantly simplifies the process of creating, saving, and displaying Custom Post Meta,
• is sexy! Your custom fields are styled to look great and SuperCPT comes with 350 awesome icons courtesy of glyphicons.com.

More Information

• If you use TextMate, Sublime Text 2, or another editor which supports TextMate bundles, check out this set of snippets to turbo-charge your SuperCPT development
• Find the full documentation on GitHub
• Contribute, report bugs, and add feature requests on GitHub

Instructions

Depending on when and where you’re declaring your Custom Post Types and Taxonomies, you have different options for which action to hook onto. after_setup_theme is the safest bet, but if you’re referencing this in another plugin, plugins_loaded is a good choice too. To avoid a fatal error if something goes awry, you should check to see if the class Super_Custom_Post_Type exists before referencing it. Don’t worry about keeping up, reference code is below.

Custom Post Types

To define a new Custom Post Type, instantiate the Super_Custom_Post_Type class with a string for the post type. For example,

$movies = new Super_Custom_Post_Type( 'movie' );

It works very much like register_post_type. The first thing you gained by using this is that the labels all got setup with either ‘Movie’ or ‘Movies’. If our post type were ‘indie-film’, the labels would have “Indie Film” and “Indie Films” as appropriate. Of course, you do have the ability to set the plural word in cases such as goose/geese. You also gained the ability to define your own custom post type default args through a filter. Lastly, you gained access to Super_Custom_Post_Type‘s parent class, Super_Custom_Post_Meta, for fast, clean, intuitive custom post meta boxes and fields, which we’ll go into shortly.

Lastly, if you’ve built a lot of custom post types, you’re probably sick and tired of the pushpin icon. SuperCPT comes with 350 gorgeous icons courtesy of glyphicons.com that are extremely easy to implement. Here’s what it looks like:

$movies->set_icon( 'film' );

Custom Taxonomies

To define a new Custom Taxonomy, much like with Custom Post Types, you instantiate Super_Custom_Taxonomy with a string for the term name. For example:

$actors = new Super_Custom_Taxonomy( 'actor' );

Again, we got free labels for doing this, using either ‘Actor’ or ‘Actors’ as appropriate, without needing to specify the 16 labels individually.

Custom Post Meta

Custom Post Meta is where SuperCPT shines the brightest, because this process is typically the most time-consuming.Super_Custom_Post_Meta is a free-standing class that can be added to any post type, even built-in post types (posts and pages). This class has a method add_meta_box which does the bulk of the work, and somewhat mimics the WordPress function. Here’s an example:

$movies->add_meta_box( array(
    'id' => 'features',
    'fields' => array(
        'tagline' => array( 'type' => 'text' )
    )
) );

The method add_meta_box takes an array of parameters (unlike the core function which takes normal ordered arguments). id is the only required attribute, and that becomes the ID of the meta box as well as the title (this will get converted into “words” for the title, e.g. "movie_details" would become “Movie Details”). fields is an array of all the fields in the meta box. It’s an associative array, where the keys in the array are the field names and the values are another associative array of attributes for the field. The keys closely reflect the HTML attributes in the resulting field, and any key not known by the plugin will in fact become an HTML attribute (e.g. passing 'data-src' => 'foo' would become the HTML attribute data-src="foo" in the field). See the reference for the full gamut of options, both for the add_meta_box argument array and the fields array.

Long story short, using this class means you don’t have to do any additional work to store data, retrieve data, style the boxes, and so on.

Helper Functions

SuperCPT has a number of helper functions for displaying and working with your post meta.

Demo Code

Here is a full body of demo code:

function scpt_demo() {
    if ( ! class_exists( 'Super_Custom_Post_Type' ) )
        return;

    $demo_posts = new Super_Custom_Post_Type( 'demo-post' );

    # Test Icon. Should be a square grid.
    $demo_posts->set_icon( 'show_thumbnails' );

    # Taxonomy test, should be like tags
    $tax_tags = new Super_Custom_Taxonomy( 'tax-tag' );

    # Taxonomy test, should be like categories
    $tax_cats = new Super_Custom_Taxonomy( 'tax-cat', 'Tax Cat', 'Tax Cats', 'category' );

    # Connect both of the above taxonomies with the post type
    connect_types_and_taxes( $demo_posts, array( $tax_tags, $tax_cats ) );

    # Add a meta box with every field type
    $demo_posts->add_meta_box( array(
        'id'      => 'demo-fields',
        'context' => 'normal',
        'fields'  => array(
            'textbox-demo'        => array(),
            'textarea-demo'       => array( 'type' => 'textarea' ),
            'wysiwyg-demo'        => array( 'type' => 'wysiwyg' ),
            'boolean-demo'        => array( 'type' => 'boolean' ),
            'checkboxes-demo'     => array( 'type' => 'checkbox', 'options' => array( 'one', 'two', 'three' ) ),
            'radio-buttons-demo'  => array( 'type' => 'radio',    'options' => array( 'one', 'two', 'three' ) ),
            'select-demo'         => array( 'type' => 'select',   'options' => array( 1 => 'one', 2 => 'two', 3 => 'three' ) ),
            'multi-select-demo'   => array( 'type' => 'select',   'options' => array( 'one', 'two', 'three' ), 'multiple' => 'multiple' ),
            'date-demo'           => array( 'type' => 'date' ),
            'label-override-demo' => array( 'label' => 'Label Demo' )
        )
    ) );

    # Add another CPT to test one-to-one (it could just as easily be one-to-many or many-to-many) relationships
    $linked_posts = new Super_Custom_Post_Type( 'linked-post', 'Other Post', 'Other Posts' );
    $linked_posts->add_meta_box( array(
        'id'      => 'one-to-one',
        'title'   => 'Testing One-to-One relationship',
        'context' => 'side',
        'fields'  => array(
            'demo-posts'   => array( 'type' => 'select', 'data' => 'demo-post' ),
            'side-wysiwyg' => array( 'type' => 'wysiwyg' )
        )
    ) );
    $linked_posts->set_icon( 'cogwheels' );
}
add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'scpt_demo' );