Meta Box Tabs

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Overview

The Meta Box Tabs extension is an UI extension for Meta Box, which helps you to put custom fields into tabs for a better view. It’s extremely useful when you have many custom fields (which can lead to a super long page).

Screenshot:

The tabs can be used with columns to structure your fields in a better way.

For more information, please see the extension page.

Installation

Before installing the extension, you need to install Meta Box plugin first.

1. Go to Plugins → Add New and search for Meta Box
2. Click Install Now button to install the plugin
3. After installing, click Activate Plugin to activate the plugin

The extension is just a WordPress plugin, you can install it like a normal WordPress plugin.

1. Go to Plugins, click Add new, then click Upload plugin.
2. Choose the .zip file you downloaded and click Install now
3. After finishing upload, click Activate to finish.

Usage

Make sure you know how to create meta boxes and fields before continue!

To create tabs for your meta box, you need to add 2 parameters to your meta box configuration:

• tab_style: Tab style. There are 3 styles available: default (like tabs for Categories), box (like tabs for Visual and Text modes of the main editor) or left (like tabs in Help screen). Optional. Default is default.

• tab_wrapper: Whether or not show the meta box wrapper around tabs. Default is true. If set to false, then the wrapper will be hidden.

• tabs: List of tabs, in one of the following formats:
  • 'tab-id' => 'Tab label'
  • 'tab-id' => array( 'label' => 'Tab label', 'icon' => 'Tab icon' )

Where tab-id will be used in fields (below) to put fields under a tab.

If use the 2nd format, then icon is the tab icon. Icons are taken from Dashicons. The value of icon is the class name of Dashicons, e.g. dashicons-email.

If you want to use another icon (not Dashicons), either:

• set icon to the font icon class name. For example, if you want to use Font Awesome, set 'icon' => 'fa fa-home'. Note that you have to enqueue the CSS for your custom font icon yourself. The plugin only supports Dashicons by default.
• set icon to URL of icon image, in case you want to use a custom image for tab icon

(Take a look at demo code to see how to implement)

Then for each field in the meta box, you need to specify which tab it belongs to by adding a parameter 'tab' => 'tab-id' where tab-id is one of the tab IDs you have registered above.

Sample code

add_filter( 'rwmb_meta_boxes', 'meta_box_tabs_demo_register' );
function meta_box_tabs_demo_register( $meta_boxes ) {
    // 1st Meta Box
    $meta_boxes[] = array(
        'title'     => 'Meta Box Tabs Demo',

        // List of tabs, in one of the following formats:
        // 1) key => label
        // 2) key => array( 'label' => Tab label, 'icon' => Tab icon )
        'tabs'      => array(
            'contact' => array(
                'label' => 'Contact',
                'icon'  => 'dashicons-email', // Dashicon
            ),
            'social'  => array(
                'label' => 'Social Media',
                'icon'  => 'dashicons-share', // Dashicon
            ),
            'note'    => array(
                'label' => 'Note',
                'icon'  => 'https://i.imgur.com/nJtag1q.png', // Custom icon, using image
            ),
        ),

        // Tab style: 'default', 'box' or 'left'. Optional
        'tab_style' => 'default',

        // Show meta box wrapper around tabs? true (default) or false. Optional
        'tab_wrapper' => true,

        'fields'    => array(
            array(
                'name' => 'Name',
                'id'   => 'name',
                'type' => 'text',

                // Which tab this field belongs to? Put tab key here
                'tab'  => 'contact',
            ),
            array(
                'name' => 'Email',
                'id'   => 'email',
                'type' => 'email',
                'tab'  => 'contact',
            ),
            array(
                'name' => 'Facebook',
                'id'   => 'facebook',
                'type' => 'text',
                'tab'  => 'social',
            ),
            array(
                'name' => 'Note',
                'id'   => 'note',
                'type' => 'textarea',
                'tab'  => 'note',
            ),
        ),
    );

    // 2nd Meta Box: Tab style - boxed
    $meta_boxes[] = array(
        'title'     => 'Meta Box Tabs 2',
        'tabs'      => array(
            'bio'      => 'Biography',
            'interest' => 'Interest',
        ),
        'tab_style' => 'box',
        'fields'    => array(
            array(
                'name' => 'Bio',
                'id'   => 'bio',
                'type' => 'textarea',
                'tab'  => 'bio',
            ),
            array(
                'name' => 'Interest',
                'id'   => 'interest',
                'type' => 'textarea',
                'tab'  => 'interest',
            ),
        ),
    );

    // 3rd Meta Box: Tab style - left
    $meta_boxes[] = array(
        'title'     => 'Meta Box Tabs 3',

        'tabs'      => array(
            'bio'      => 'Biography',
            'interest' => 'Interest',
            'job'      => 'Job',
        ),
        'tab_style' => 'left',
        'fields'    => array(
            array(
                'name' => 'Bio',
                'id'   => 'bio',
                'type' => 'textarea',
                'tab'  => 'bio',
            ),
            array(
                'name' => 'Interest',
                'id'   => 'interest',
                'type' => 'textarea',
                'tab'  => 'interest',
            ),
            array(
                'name' => 'Job Description',
                'id'   => 'job_desc',
                'type' => 'textarea',
                'tab'  => 'job',
            ),
        ),
    );

    // 4th Meta Box: No wrapper
    $meta_boxes[] = array(
        'title'       => 'Meta Box Tabs 4',
        'tabs'        => array(
            'contact' => array(
                'label' => 'Info',
                'icon'  => 'dashicons-email',
            ),
            'social'  => array(
                'label' => 'Social',
                'icon'  => 'dashicons-share',
            ),
        ),
        'tab_style'   => 'box',
        'tab_wrapper' => false,
        'fields'      => array(
            array(
                'name' => 'Name',
                'id'   => 'name2',
                'type' => 'text',
                'tab'  => 'contact',
            ),
            array(
                'name' => 'Google+',
                'id'   => 'googleplus2',
                'type' => 'text',
                'tab'  => 'social',
            ),
        ),
    );

    return $meta_boxes;
}

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