Greg Rickaby

Greg Rickaby

Full-Stack Engineer / Photographer / Author

Modify a Custom Post Type after it’s been registered

Posted on | 1 minute read

Showstoppers - Biloxi, MS

Today I was tasked with adding functionality to an existing custom post type. The problem was, the CPT was being registered in a plugin that I could not edit.

After some digging, I found there’s a filter for that that allows you to modify a custom post type after it’s been registered some other way.

apply_filters( 'register_post_type_args', $args, $post_type );

Hooking into that filter, allowed me to pass additional options to an existing CPT:

/**
 * Edit Products CPT arguments.
 *
 * @see https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/register_post_type/
 * @param $args       array    The original CPT args.
 * @param $post_type  string   The CPT slug.
 * @return array               The updated CPT.
 */
function grd_edit_cpt( $args, $post_type ) {

	// Not the Products CPT? Bail...
	if ( 'products' !== $post_type ) {
		return $args;
	}

	// Update CPT arguments.
	$updated_args = [
		'has_archive' => true,
		'supports'    => [ 'title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'custom-fields'],
	];

	// Merge args together.
	return array_merge( $args, $updated_args );
}
add_filter( 'register_post_type_args', 'grd_edit_cpt', 10, 2 );

Now “Products” has an archive, along with some other meta boxes in the post editor. Nice!

Comments

No comments yet.

Alvin

Alvin

Nice post and exactly what i was looking for! I have the same problem: a CPT registered by a plugin doesnt have tags, categories and a text field. I dont want a developer to modify the plugin because its constantly updating. Now i see that this would rather be a “simple” addition to the (child) theme. Thx!

Felipe Romero

Felipe Romero

Thoroughly explained, thank you very much. This worked wonders for me!

Mohammed

Mohammed

Thanks a lot.. Working so nice!

karl632

karl632

Thanks, just what I needed to disable has_archive for a CPT added by the parent theme.

Chet

Chet

Thank you!

Leave a Comment