• etling

• December 19, 2019 at 2:47 pm

@sporklab for a quick and dirty solution to this, I use jQuery and the acf field ID. Here’s an example below where a metabox is added to a certain post type, and when the user enters an ID in a field and fetches data from a remote API, it fills out some ACF fields:

function my_metabox_render() { ?>
  <p>Enter the ID:</p>
  <input type="text" id="the_id_for_remote_api" />
  <button id="my_import_button" class="button button-primary button-large">Import</button>  
 
<script>

    jQuery("#my_import_button").on("click", function(e) {
      e.preventDefault();
      var theID = jQuery("#the_id_for_remote_api").val();
      var apiEndpoint  = "https://some.api.com/someendpoint/" + theID + ".json?api_key=some_nifty_key";
      
      jQuery.get(apiEndpoint, function(data) {
        console.log(data);
        jQuery("input#acf-field_abc123xyz456").val(data.coolInfo);
        jQuery("input#acf-field_zxy987qwe123").val(data.sweetData);
      });
    });
  </script>
<?php }

function register_my_metabox() {

    add_meta_box(
        'my_meta_box_id',
        'Example Metabox Title',
        'my_metabox_render',
        'your_custom_post_type_here',
        'side',
        'default'
    );
}
add_action( 'add_meta_boxes', 'register_my_metabox' );

Like I said, this is just the rough outline. But it works pretty well for the use case you described. Note that I tend to keep the “remote” field separate from ACF, siloed in the metabox, it just simplifies things.