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This topic contains 10 replies, has 2 voices.
Last updated by 5 years, 6 months ago.
Assisted by: Christian Cox.
Hi, the post reference field is not a bad approach here. Instead of using a View to display the related Agents, you would just use the post title shortcode. When inserting the post title shortcode in a View's loop, you can use the Post Selection tab to choose a post related to the current post by a reference field (see the screenshot). So basically you would insert the post title shortcode as many times as there are levels of Agents. Let's assume it's 3 levels but it could be more. The system will generate the appropriate shortcodes to display each agent, something like this:
Primary Agent: [wpv-post-title item="@reference-slug-1.parent"]<br /> Secondary Agent: [wpv-post-title item="@reference-slug-2.parent"]<br /> Tertiary Agent: [wpv-post-title item="@reference-slug-3.parent"]<br />
Your slugs will probably be different from mine, and depending on how you set up your post references you may need to use ".child" instead of ".parent". You could also use conditional HTML to hide each line of results if no agent is selected for that level:
[wpv-conditional if="( '[wpv-post-id item="@reference-slug-1.parent"]' ne '' )"] Primary Agent: [wpv-post-title item="@reference-slug-1.parent"]<br /> [/wpv-conditional] [wpv-conditional if="( '[wpv-post-id item="@reference-slug-2.parent"]' ne '' )"] Secondary Agent: [wpv-post-title item="@reference-slug-2.parent"]<br /> [/wpv-conditional] [wpv-conditional if="( '[wpv-post-id item="@reference-slug-3.parent"]' ne '' )"] Tertiary Agent: [wpv-post-title item="@reference-slug-3.parent"]<br /> [/wpv-conditional]
The other option is to use a many-to-many post relationship between Agents and Properties, and use an intermediary post type in the relationship. Then you could apply a custom field to the relationship, where you would set the level of each Agent related to the Property using a number. Then you could sort a View of the intermediary post type by the custom field number. This approach is a bit more complex and has some significant impacts for searches (you can't search or filter a View of Intermediary posts based on custom fields in other post types). So I think your post reference fields approach is probably more practical, because it doesn't have that major limitation.
Thanks Christian, appreciate the options you've laid out.
I agree that for choosing the primary agent, secondary agent, etc. the post reference is the best to sort on the frontend. The only issue which I probably should have mentioned is that I am pulling other custom fields for the Agent post type as well.
While I can pull the title (Agent Name) and Featured Image (Agent Photo) using post reference, how would I then pull custom fields from that post type that include contact info like phone number and email address. Basically, this is why I chose a view so that these fields would be shown for each agent and styled.
Each agent on the property needs the output of Featured Image, Agent Name, Phone #, Title & Email Address. The actual post type of "Agent" does not need to be archived or even linked as there are current agent bio pages on the site already. The post type of agent was created simply for the relationship and the ability for an admin to choose the agents on the backend and then all the information for each agent to be outputted on the front end and styled when they are adding a new property.
I've attached the current view used for the output, and basically just need to then sort the order of the agents on backend for frontend output depending on which is the main agent, secondary agent, etc. The layout is great, its just the sorting of the agent "blocks" (Name, Photo, Contact info) that needs to be controlled on a per property basis.
Again, really appreciate the help!
Perfect, thanks Christian, I was able to implement directly into the content template manually using the the correct syntax. The custom fields for the Agent type didn't give the post selection tab in the popup for the custom fields, but changing the types field in the shortcode using the specific slug worked.
Are there specific fields that you aren't allowed to select "related post by post reference" on a custom post type? Just wanted to double check if that was a setting in the post type somewhere that hindered it.
Thanks again!
