I'm working on converting my old NucleusCMS blogs to WordPress. I have created a set of tables locally and began the conversion process. I've been fine right up to image "conversion". I think I can pull the old image and add it to the library using this answer. After that, I'm sort of lost.

What I want to do is, having just programmatically added a media item (picture), then use that image by programmatically adding it to a specific post with the dimensions and alt text I just pulled (via regex) from the source I was working from.

Step 1. I need to get a pointer or id or something for the freshly added media.

I don't 100% know what I am doing with WordPress itself so I do not know how to get a handle on the media I just added.

Step 2. I need to make that image be part of a post.

As for how I add it to the post (in the right size) in whatever format WordPress uses natively...

I need help with both steps.

I'm working on converting my old NucleusCMS blogs to WordPress. I have created a set of tables locally and began the conversion process. I've been fine right up to image "conversion". I think I can pull the old image and add it to the library using this answer. After that, I'm sort of lost.

What I want to do is, having just programmatically added a media item (picture), then use that image by programmatically adding it to a specific post with the dimensions and alt text I just pulled (via regex) from the source I was working from.

Step 1. I need to get a pointer or id or something for the freshly added media.

I don't 100% know what I am doing with WordPress itself so I do not know how to get a handle on the media I just added.

Step 2. I need to make that image be part of a post.

As for how I add it to the post (in the right size) in whatever format WordPress uses natively...

I need help with both steps.

• posts
• post-thumbnails
• media-library

• So far I have figured out that WordPress calls this sideloading but there are several similar functions so I still need help. – Matthew Brown aka Lord Matt Commented May 6, 2019 at 1:02
• 1 Are you able to figure out the way to achieve this? If not I would like to work this problem of yours. :) – BlueSuiter Commented Jun 13, 2019 at 7:19
• I'm completely stumped at the moment. Programmatically working with posts is entirely new to me. Please feel free - I need all the help I can get. – Matthew Brown aka Lord Matt Commented Jun 13, 2019 at 7:33
• I have to look into your code, you are writing. Can you share the access to that? – BlueSuiter Commented Jun 13, 2019 at 9:28

2 Answers 2

Hey I used this code for something similar(I was also downloading remote image and uploading to WordPress site). Please have a look:

$image_url = $value;//This is the sanitized image url.
$image = pathinfo($image_url);//Extracting information into array.
$image_name = $image['basename'];
$upload_dir = wp_upload_dir();
$image_data = file_get_contents($image_url);
$unique_file_name = wp_unique_filename($upload_dir['path'], $image_name);
$filename = basename($unique_file_name);
$postarr = array(
    'post_title' => $post_title,
    'post_content' => $post_content,
    'post_type' => 'post',//or whatever is your post type slug.
    'post_status' => 'publish',
    'meta_input' => array(
        //If you have any meta data, that will go here.
    ),
);
$insert_id = wp_insert_post($postarr, true);
if (!is_wp_error($insert_id)) {
    if ($image != '') {
        // Check folder permission and define file location
        if (wp_mkdir_p($upload_dir['path'])) {
            $file = $upload_dir['path'] . '/' . $filename;
        } else {
            $file = $upload_dir['basedir'] . '/' . $filename;
        }
        // Create the image  file on the server
        file_put_contents($file, $image_data);
        // Check image file type
        $wp_filetype = wp_check_filetype($filename, null);
        // Set attachment data
        $attachment = array(
            'post_mime_type' => $wp_filetype['type'],
            'post_title' => sanitize_file_name($filename),
            'post_content' => '',
            'post_status' => 'inherit',
        );
        // Create the attachment
        $attach_id = wp_insert_attachment($attachment, $file, $insert_id);
        // Include image.php
        require_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/image.php';
        // Define attachment metadata
        $attach_data = wp_generate_attachment_metadata($attach_id, $file);
        // Assign metadata to attachment
        wp_update_attachment_metadata($attach_id, $attach_data);
        // And finally assign featured image to post
        $thumbnail = set_post_thumbnail($insert_id, $attach_id);
    }
}

Building upon the accepted answer on the linked question, I think something like this might work.

So basically,

1. get the existing post content with get_post_field
2. upload the image with wp_insert_attachment which gives you the image ID
3. grab the image size and alt from the post content somehow
4. let WP generate the markup for the image with wp_get_attachment_image
5. replace the old image placeholder with the new image html
6. when all of the image placeholders have been replaced with img tags, save the modified post content to DB with wp_update_post

Optionally set any of the images as the post thumbnail / featured image with set_post_thumbnail.

$post_id = 1234;
$images = array('filename1.png', 'filename2.png', ... 'filename10.png');

// Get post content
$post_content = get_post_field( 'post_content', $post_id );

// Get the path to the upload directory.
$wp_upload_dir = wp_upload_dir();

foreach($images as $name) {
  $attachment = array(
    'guid'=> $wp_upload_dir['url'] . '/' . basename( $name ), 
    'post_mime_type' => 'image/png',
    'post_title' => 'my description',
    'post_content' => 'my description',
    'post_status' => 'inherit'
  );

  /**
    * STEP 1
    * add images as attachments to WordPress
    */
  $image_id = wp_insert_attachment($attachment, $name, $post_id);
  // Make sure that this file is included, as wp_generate_attachment_metadata() depends on it.
  require_once( ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/image.php' );
  // Generate the metadata for the attachment, and update the database record.
  $attach_data = wp_generate_attachment_metadata( $image_id, $name );
  wp_update_attachment_metadata( $image_id, $attach_data );

  /**
    * STEP 2
    * Grab image data from $post_content
    */
  // strpos() + substr() maybe?
  $width = 123;
  $height = 123;
  $alt = 'Hello';

  /**
    * STEP 3
    * get html markup for image
    */  
  // Let WP generate the html markup for the image, adjust size as needed (thumbnail,medium,large,full,array(width,height))
  $image_html = wp_get_attachment_image( $image_id, array( $width, $height ), false, array( 'alt' => $alt ) );

  /**
    * STEP 4
    * Replace placeholders in content with img markup
    */
  preg_replace( $pattern, $image_html, $post_content ) // I don't understand regex well enough to give an example, so you need to figure it out yourself

  /**
    * OPTIONAL
    * set image as featured
    */
  if ( $name === 'example' ) {
    set_post_thumbnail( $post_id, $image_id );
  }

}

/**
  * STEP 5
  * Update post content
  */
$post_with_imported_images = array(
  'ID'           => $post_id,
  'post_content' => $post_content,
);
wp_update_post( $post_with_imported_images );

EDIT This should work, maybe with little tweaking, at least with the Classic Editor. I'm not sure about Gutenberg as I haven't worked with it much.