Relationships feature from Meta Box allows you to relate post types, users, pages together. In this practice, we’ll share the way to create a bi-directional relationship between Courses and Instructors post types for example. Then, we’ll display the related instructors to a course and vice versa, using Meta Box and Oxygen.

Create Relationships - Using Meta Box and Oxygen

Video Version

Before Getting Started

I have Courses and Instructors as two separate custom post types. I will create a bi-directional relationship between them. The relationship will show the course is contributed by which instructors and the instructor contributes to which courses. This kind of information will be displayed on the archive page and singular page of each post type.

As you can see, we’ll need the Meta Box core plugin to have a framework to create custom post types, custom fields, and relationships. You can download it directly from wordpress.org.

Also, we need some Meta Box extensions for the advanced features:

  • MB Custom Post Type: to create a custom post type for the courses and instructors.
  • Meta Box Builder: to have a UI on the backend to create custom fields and relationships easily.
  • MB Relationships: to create relationships between these post types.
  • MB Admin Columns: to display the related courses and related instructors in the dashboard.

You can install these extensions individually or use Meta Box AIO to have them all.

And the last one, I have Oxygen to build the pages. You should use its 3.9 version or higher, which has native integration with Meta Box.

Create the Custom Post Types

Go to Meta Box > Post Types to create a new post type for the instructors. Also create a new one for the courses.

Create a new post type for the instructors

Then, you will see new menus displayed in the Admin Dashboard. They’re your post types.

There are the post types that we created

Create Custom Fields

You may want to add some custom fields for each post type for some extra information of the courses or the instructors. It’s optional. Just go to Meta Box > Custom Fields to create fields as usual. I also created some for the courses as follows.

Create custom fields for each post type for some extra information of the courses or the instructors

Create Relationships

Let’s create relationships between the Courses and Instructors post types. Go to Meta Box > Relationships to create a new one.

Create relationships between the Courses and Instructors post types

There’ll be the From and To section as follows. The relationship is bidirectional, so you can put the two post types into any section.

Setting relationships

Since they are post types, remember to set the object type as Post in both sections.

Set the object type as Post in both sections

Set the Post type in the From section as one that we want to be in the relationship. In this case I set Instructor, so the rest one in the To section will be the Course.

Set the Post type in the From section as one that we want to be in the relationship

Because I activated the MB Admin Column extension, I have this option in the relationship’s settings.

Show as an admin column

I set it to show the related courses and instructors in a column in the dashboard.

In the Field tab of both sections, you can set a label for the relationship section in the post editor.

Set a label for the relationship section in the post editor.

That’s all to set the relationship. Go to a post editor of the Course post type, there’ll be a box at the right sidebar to choose which instructors related to the current post. As well as, there'll be a box in the post editor of the Instructor post type to choose which courses related to the current instructor. It displays as a field, this will make sense when you get posts from this field in the next step.

Choose which courses related to the current instructor

Then, in the dashboard, you will see the related posts like this:

The related posts

Display the Relationship

In this part, I will display these relations on both the singular page of the Course post type, and the Instructor post type, also on the archive page where all the courses are listed.

Display the Relationship on a Singular Page

Let’s display the relations on the singular page of the Course and the Instructor post types.

This is the page to show the detailed information about one instructor. There will be a section to show all the courses that the instructor contributed to.

The page to show the detailed information about one instructor

Go to Oxygen > Template > Add New Template as usual.

Go to Oxygen > Template > Add New Template

Remember to set the template as Singular and choose the name of the post type as Instructors and publish.

Set the template and choose the name of the post type

Then edit it with Oxygen.

Edit it with Oxygen

Choose an instructor for the preview.

Choose an instructor for the preview

Insert a Section component.

Insert a Section component

Add a Heading to display the name of the instructor from the post title.

Add a Heading to display the name of the instructor from the post title

Also add a Text component to display the biography of the instructor, that is saved in the post content.

Display the biography of the instructor

Now, let’s display the related courses. There will be multiple posts, so add a Repeater component.

Add a Repeater component

In its Query section, choose advanced and add parameters for the query like this.

Choose advanced and add parameters for the query

In there, course is the slug of the Courses post type. It means that we’ll get posts from this post type.

The slug of the Courses post type

Next, add the second parameter as follows.

Add the second parameter

To add the value in the parameter, choose Meta Box field from the range and we can see the Related Courses field that allows us to choose posts which are related to an instructor.

Choose posts which are related to an instructor

All of these parameters stipulate that only the posts that are listed in the Related Course field will be displayed.

All of these parameters stipulate are listed in the Related Course field

Inside the Repeater component, there’ll be a Div. Add some components inside this Div to display the courses’ information.

First, add an Image component and insert data from the Featured Image of the post.

Add an Image component and insert data from the Featured Image of the post

Add a Heading then insert data from the Post Title for the course name.

Add a Heading then insert data from the Post Title for the course name

You may get the wrong name and image of the course, but don't worry about it. Just keep moving, you will see the right things later.

Keep adding some other components, then insert data from custom fields of the Courses as usual. After getting all the wanted information for the course, save the template and go to the page on frontend. You will see the courses along with their information displayed correctly.

The courses along with their information displayed

Back to the template, the preview will display correctly as well. You can change the settings of each component to get the wanted look for the page. Here is the one that I got after styling.

The preview display correctly after styling

On the other hand, we also can display the instructor name in the singular page of the course. I already have a singular page with a template to display the course's detailed information. We’ll display the related instructor in this place.

Display the related instructor

Add a Div component or just duplicate one from your created Div components.

Add a Div component or just duplicate

Change the text in the Content section of the component.

Change the text in the Content section of the component

Then, insert data from the Related Instructor field into the component.

Insert data from the Related Instructor field into the component

If you want to display the instructor name along with the link, choose the Post URL option when inserting data like this.

Choose the Post URL option when inserting data

Then on the page that shows the course details, you will see the related instructor name as follows.

The course details on the page

Display the Relationship on an Archive Page

Let’s add related instructors to the archive page for the courses.

Add related instructors to the archive page for the courses

In the template of the page, you may have a Repeater element to display all the posts since this is an archive page.

Repeater element to display all the posts

Add a Div and some Text components inside the Repeater.

Add a Div and some Text components inside the Repeater

Change the content of the first Text component.

Change the content of the first Text component

Insert data from the Related Instructor field into the second Text component.

Insert data from the Related Instructor field into the second Text component

Save the template and we can see it displayed on the frontend.

The template displayed on the frontend

Last Words

The above was a very simple way to display the relationships in several typical places with Oxygen. You can display related content in any way with simple steps. If you have any concerns about it, let us know in the comments. Best of luck!

6 thoughts on “How to Create Relationships - P1 - Using Meta Box and Oxygen

  1. Trying to follow this step by step, when I get to "To add the value in the parameter, choose Meta Box field from the range and we can see the Related Courses field that allows us to choose posts which are related to an instructor.", I do not have the relationships button in the meta box field options?
    Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?
    Thanks
    Dan

    1. I guess that you didn't set the labels when you create the relationship, back to that step, then go to the Field tab in the relationship settings to add the labels. When adding the parameter, look for the field with label you added. Try it and let us know the result!

  2. Hello,

    In the last step (Archive page).
    I would like to show the title of a related post but without the link.
    Is it possible ?

    Thanks you !

    Regards,

  3. Hello,

    I have another problem.
    Imagine courses have multiple instructors.

    I want to show all instructor. When I make the custom query like you in this article, I only have one instructor who appears.

    Can you explain me how I can do ?

    Thanks,

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