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Create Custom Fields for Event Posts

Create Custom Fields for Event Posts

Learn to work with dates in WordPress.

We'll cover the following...

In this lesson, we will create a new post type for events taking place in the school. The event posts will be sorted according to the date the event takes place.

Create custom post type—event

Creating a custom post type has been covered in the Registering Custom Post Type lesson in detail. Navigate to the mu-plugins folder inside the wp-content folder. This folder has a school-custom-post-types.php file where we registered the teacher and course post types. Following the same steps, we will register the event post type.

The school-custom-post-types.php file has a function school_custom_post_types which hooks onto the init hook during the WordPress initialization. To create a custom post type, the first step is to define the attributes. Create an array of arguments called $eventArgs as follows:

<?php
    $eventArgs = array(
        'public' => true,
        'show_in_rest' => true,
        'labels' => array(
                    'name' => 'Events',
                    'singular_name' => 'Event',
                    'add_new_item' => 'Add New Event',
                    'edit_item' => 'Edit Event',
                    'view_item' => 'View Event',
                    'all_items' => 'All Events'
                ),
        'menu_icon' => 'dashicons-calendar-alt',
        'rewrite'=> array(
                     'slug'=> 'events'
                 ),
        'has_archive' => true,
        'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'excerpt' )
    );
Registering event post type

  • The event post type supports an archive.

  • The default /event slug has been rewritten as /events.

  • We have used the calendar dashicon for the post type.

For an explanation of the rest of the attributes, visit the Custom post type arguments section.

Next, we will pass the array created above to the register_post_type() function.

<?php
function school_custom_post_types() {
    //$teacherArgs array
    //$courseArgs array
    //$eventArgs array
    register_post_type('teacher', $teacherArgs);
    register_post_type('course', $courseArgs);
    register_post_type('event', $eventArgs);
}
add_action('init', 'school_custom_post_types');
Registering event post type

After saving changes, we can see the "Events" option in the admin dashboard sidebar.

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Event custom post type
Event custom post type

Update permalink structure

WordPress does not update its permalink structure very often so it might not know that /events exists. To force an update of the permalink structure, go to "Settings" in the admin dashboard sidebar, then choose "Permalinks."

Since there is no need to change the way permalinks are being displayed on this screen, we will only click the "Save Changes" button. WordPress will regenerate the URLs thereby registering the /events slug.

Create a custom field group for event

For the event post type, there are some details that should be saved with every post. Every event takes place on a certain date, at a particular location and at a certain time. We will create a field group with fields for date, location and time. We will make this field group mandatory so that every new event must be created with a date, location, and time information.

Field names and types

Click the "ACF" option from the admin dashboard sidebar. Click "Field Groups" to create a field group and name it Event Details.

  • Create a field for the event date.

    • Provide Event Date as "Field Label". This automatically generates the "Field Name" as event_date. This name can be ...