How to delete custom taxonomy terms in plugin’s uninstall.php?

0 Views

I am writing my plugin’s uninstall.php file and would like it to delete any terms that were created in the plugin’s custom taxonomy.

In the plugin’s uninstall.php file I am using this:

Read More
// Delete all custom terms for this taxonomy
$terms = get_terms('custom_taxonomy');
foreach ($terms as $term) {
    wp_delete_term( $term->ID, 'custom_taxonomy' );
}

The problem seems to be that the custom taxonomy isn’t registered at this point, so get_terms returns an error for “invalid taxonomy”, thus I can’t delete the custom terms in this manner, which seems the most straightforward way to do so.

If the custom taxonomy isn’t registered when uninstall.php is called, how can I have it so that my plugin is able to clean up it’s custom data?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Post Views: 0

Related posts

4 comments

  1. Using the uninstall hook would be legitimate if it worked, but it dumps the same error as the uninstall file. It would have more chances of working as it loads the main plugin file to perform the uninstall function, but if the taxonomy is not registered anymore (and it is not, as we need to deactivate before uninstalling), WP cannot use get_terms.

    Adapting the following function from this Stack Overflow answer should do the work:

    function load_terms($taxonomy){
    global $wpdb;
    $query = 'SELECT DISTINCT 
                                t.name 
                            FROM
                                `wp-cls`.wp_terms t 
                            INNER JOIN 
                                `wp-cls`.wp_term_taxonomy tax 
                            ON 
                             `tax`.term_id = `t`.term_id
                            WHERE 
                                ( `tax`.taxonomy = '' . $taxonomy . '')';                     
    $result =  $wpdb->get_results($query , ARRAY_A);
    return $result;                 
}

  2. Based on input from brasofilo, here is what I ended up doing:

    function delete_custom_terms($taxonomy){
    global $wpdb;

    $query = 'SELECT t.name, t.term_id
            FROM ' . $wpdb->terms . ' AS t
            INNER JOIN ' . $wpdb->term_taxonomy . ' AS tt
            ON t.term_id = tt.term_id
            WHERE tt.taxonomy = "' . $taxonomy . '"';

    $terms = $wpdb->get_results($query);

    foreach ($terms as $term) {
        wp_delete_term( $term->term_id, $taxonomy );
    }
}

// Delete all custom terms for this taxonomy
delete_custom_terms(LISTING_TAXONOMY);

  4. I know this is 10 years old but as it came up on Google, I found , after some experiments a simpler solution.

    Simply re-register the taxonomy in your uninstall code e.g.

        // register the term so we can then delete it
    register_taxonomy( 'my_custom_tax', 'my_cpt' );
    // remove all custom taxonomies
    $terms = get_terms( 'my_custom_tax', array( 'hide_empty' => false ) );
    foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
        wp_delete_term( $term->term_id, 'my_custom_tax' );
    }

Comments are closed.