I am working on a WordPress site that has a custom front-end submission form for adding in a post of content type, ‘sketchpad’. The form has a section that allows you to upload multiple images with a description field which is going to be used as an alt tag. What is an easy way for me to upload multiple attachments with accompanying descriptions from the front-end?
The code that currently catches the uploaded files is here:
// Make sure a user can edit posts (contributor level)
if (current_user_can('edit_posts'))
{
global $post;
// If we have files
if ( $_FILES )
{
// Get the upload attachment files
$files = $_FILES['upload_attachment'];
foreach ($files['name'] as $key => $value)
{
if ($files['name'][$key])
{
$file = array(
'name' => $files['name'][$key],
'type' => $files['type'][$key],
'tmp_name' => $files['tmp_name'][$key],
'error' => $files['error'][$key],
'size' => $files['size'][$key]
);
$_FILES = array("upload_attachment" => $file);
foreach ($_FILES as $file => $array)
{
$newupload = insert_attachment($file,$post->ID);
}
}
}
}
}
This is the ‘insert attachment’ function that actually handles the uploaded files and inserts them:
function insert_attachment($file_handler, $post_id)
{
// check to make sure its a successful upload
if ($_FILES[$file_handler]['error'] !== UPLOAD_ERR_OK) __return_false();
require_once(ABSPATH . "wp-admin" . '/includes/image.php');
require_once(ABSPATH . "wp-admin" . '/includes/file.php');
require_once(ABSPATH . "wp-admin" . '/includes/media.php');
$attach_id = media_handle_upload( $file_handler, $post_id );
return $attach_id;
}
I eventually worked this out. After a lot of thinking it dawned on me that attachments are merely posts assigned to the post_type of ‘attachment’ so then I soon discovered that attachments have a post_content field, as well as a post_title field. For my needs, I only needed the post_title attribute as my descriptions are small. The below code is what worked for me.
The $upload_id value is merely the attachment ID returned from my insert_attachment function.