[wp-xmlrpc] Updating Custom Fields Using metaWeblog.editPost

[Joseph Scott]

On Apr 7, 2009, at 2:09 PM, Daniel Jalkut wrote:

>> The reason for this because you can have duplicate keys, so the id  
>> is required in order to uniquely identify a field.  There's nothing  
>> to stop you from having 25 custom fields on a post all with the  
>> same key name.
>
> Do you have a sense for whether many (any?) plugins expect this kind  
> of scenario? In providing a service to my customers, I'm expecting  
> to allow them to configure named fields with the assumption that  
> there will be a 1-1 relationship of names and fields. I wonder if  
> I'm setting myself up for a customer backlash with this restriction.
>
> I'm thinking mostly of the obvious cases for custom fields like  
> "mood", "music I'm listening to", etc.  Seems like if it has a name,  
> most customers will only expect for there to be one.



Unfortunately I don't have a feel for what people are actually doing  
with custom fields out in the wild.

I agree that in many cases a simple one to one would work fine.  I  
could see situations where'd you not want that though, it makes it  
easy to store one type of data multiple times.  Here's a made up  
example, what if you wanted to save the GPS coordinates of your  
location every time you edited a post?  Would be simple enough to have  
a custom field key called "gps_edit_location" with the value storing  
all the bits you needed.  A theme could then ask for all of the  
"gps_edit_location" custom fields for each post and display them  
accordingly.



--
Joseph Scott
joseph at josephscott.org
http://josephscott.org/