WP_Customize_Image_Control should return attachment ID instead of image URL

[silb3r]

WP_Customize_Image_Control should, by default, return an attachment ID instead of an image URL.

[johnbillion]

Yes yes yes yes yes! This has caused me no end up trouble over the last few weeks. Unfortunately what we will need to do is create a new customizer control so we maintain backward compatibility in the WP_Customize_Image_Control class. Either that or introduce a parameter to that class which indicates it should store and return an attachment ID.

[tollmanz]

I recently learned that another reason why this is so important is that if you queue up an image control and save the data in a theme mod, the mods become tough to transfer to a different domain due to the serialization of the theme mod array. Protecting against this would be really excellent.

[alan-dale]

I agree. I have been working more with the customization API and it would be nice to be able to use images sized specifically for headers and the like. And as tollmanz said, if you develop using the dev/staging/production server method, serializing the URL into the data makes transferring your settings across environments less than ideal. Maybe in a new release of 4.0?

[celloexpressions]

Sadly, we can't do this for back compat purposes. The proposed WP_Customize_Media_Control (#29215) would allow us to essentially duplicate the functionality of the new WP_Customize_Upload_Control (and by extension the image control) but store the attachment id or other data rather than the file url directly. Also worth noting that core currently has to use attachment_url_to_postid() to facilitate this, and that workaround could be an option in themes and plugins as well. Let's move this discussion to #29215.

Related: #21483.

[rodrigosprimo]

Anyone has a workaround to get the ID of the attachment while WP_Customize_Media_Control is not created?