Getting WordPress to Check for Your Custom Field

Once you’ve added the necessary code to your template file to display your Custom Field, you should be ready to publish your WordPress site. But what if you want to publish a post in which you don’t want the mood Custom Field to appear? You can easily make WordPress check to see whether the Custom Field is added. If it finds the Custom Field, WordPress displays your mood; if it doesn’t find the Custom Field, WordPress doesn’t display the Custom Field.

If you’ve already changed the code in your template file, the code in your template looks something like this:

<p><strong>My Current Mood is:<strong> <em><?php $key="mood"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?></em></p>

To make WordPress check to see whether the mood Custom Field exists, add this code to the line above your existing code:

<?php if ( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'mood', true) ) : ?>

Then add this line of code to the line below your existing code:

<?php endif; ?>

Put together, the lines of code in your template should look like this:

<?php if ( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'mood', true) ) : ?>

<p><strong>My Current Mood is:</strong> <em><?php $key="mood"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?></em></p>

<?php endif; ?>

The first line is an IF statement that asks “Does the mood key exist for this post?” If so, the value gets displayed. If not, WordPress skips the code, ignoring it so that nothing gets displayed for the mood Custom Field. The final line of code simply puts an end to the IF question.3