How to Update Posts with Gravity Forms

• April 2, 2021: Added support for updating author.

• February 3, 2021: Added support for updating custom fields.

Overview

Using Gravity Forms to create posts is easy. With a Basic or Pro license you can use Post fields to create new posts on your site. With an Elite license you gain access to the Advanced Post Creation add-on, which can create custom posts, map custom fields, and add uploaded files to the Media Library.

One thing that neither of these methods can do is update existing posts. Post fields and the APC add-on can only create new posts. In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to pair a snippet with Populate Anything to update existing posts in WordPress. Let’s get started.

1. Add Post Field
2. Add Title Field
3. Add Post Content Field
4. Add Class and Parameters

Using the Snippet

Prerequisites

Confirm that you have Gravity Forms and Populate Anything installed and activated and that you’ve installed the snippet.

Step 1 – Add Post Field

Start by adding a Drop Down field to the form called “Post”. Use Populate Anything to populate posts into the Drop Down for the user to select from.

These settings will populate all Posts as choices in the Drop Down. If you want to limit the available Posts to ones that current user wrote, add a filter where Author is Current User.

Step 2 – Add Title Field

Add a Single Line Text field to the form named “Post Title”. Use Populate Anything to populate the Post Title from the selected Post in the Drop Down.

This field populates with the selected post’s title. If the user replaces that title with a new title, the snippet will overwrite that title when the form is submitted.

Step 3 – Add Post Content Field

Next, add a Paragraph field called “Post Content”. This field will also be populated via Populated Anything.

Since WordPress posts contain HTML for formatting, I recommend activating Gravity Forms’ Rich Text Editor in the Advanced tab. Otherwise, the raw HTML will display on population, which can be confusing for the user.

Step 4 – Add Class and Parameters

With all of the fields in place, the next step is to add the following class to your theme’s functions.php.

new GW_Update_Posts( array(
	'form_id' => 123,
	'post_id' => 1,
	'title'  => 2,
	'content' => 3,
	'author' => 4,
	'meta'    => array(
		'custom_field'         => 5,
		'another_custom_field' => 6
	)
) );

This class has four required parameters and two optional parameters.

• form_id integer required

  The ID of the form which will be used to update posts.

• post_id integer required

  The ID of the field whose value contains the Post ID.

• title string required

  The ID of the field whose value contains the new post title.

• content string required

  The ID of the field whose value contains the new post content.

• author int optional

  The ID of the field whose value contains the new post author.

• meta array optional

  An array of custom fields whose keys match the custom field’s name and values match the IDs of the field containing the custom field’s value.

That’s It

With the code in place, the selected post’s title and content will be updated when the form is submitted. Currently the snippet can update the title and content, but we’d love to hear your feedback regarding how you’d like to use it.

Taking It Further

Update Post Author

The post author can be updated using the author parameter. Use Populate Anything to populate a list of users into a choice field.

Then, populate the current post’s author as the value of that field. When the form loads, all user’s will be populates as choices in the field and the current post’s author will be selected from the options.

Set the author parameter to this field. A user can select a new author from the options, and the snippet will take care of the rest.

new GW_Update_Posts( array(
	'form_id' => 123,
	'post_id' => 1,
	'author' => 4,
) );

Update Custom Fields

The snippet also supports updating custom fields using the meta parameter. This parameter expects an array with the keys set to the name of each custom field and values set to the field ID that contains the desired value.

new GW_Update_Posts( array(
	'form_id' => 123,
	'post_id' => 1,
	'meta'    => array(
		'custom_field'         => 5,
		'another_custom_field' => 6
	)
) );