Meta Key Values in Custom Field Dropdown

• 

  • kenchase

  • July 6, 2013 at 2:57 am

  I haven’t noticed this reported elsewhere so I’m reporting it.

  I’ve setup Field Groups/Custom Fields to appear conditionally on a custom post type that I’ve created.

  As expected, I do not see these Field Groups when editing a built-in WordPress page/post. However, the ACF meta keys do appear in WordPress’ Custom Fields field group drop-down list (see attched screenshot).

  I’ve written code to remove the ACF meta keys from the drop-down list. However, I would expect ACF to include code that automatically hides meta keys that it creates.

  Regards,
  Ken Chase
  http://kenchase.com
• 

  

  • Elliot

  • July 6, 2013 at 11:01 am

  Hi @kenchase

  Perhaps you could share your code to help identify the problem and solution?

  Thanks
  Elliot
• 

  • kenchase

  • July 11, 2013 at 12:42 am

  1 – For all of the custom fields that I control the naming of, I prefixed the key with an underscore (i.e. “_my_custom_field”). This prevents them from being displayed in WordPress’ custom fields drop-down list.

  2 – For the custom fields that ACF automatically generates (i.e. when using tabs, ACF uses the “field_51” prefix on the site that I’m working on), I wrote some PHP:

  if(!function_exists(‘kc_hide_meta_keys_start’)){
  function kc_hide_meta_keys_start( $num ){
  add_filter( ‘query’, ‘kc_hide_meta_keys_filter’ );
  return $num;
  }
  add_filter( ‘postmeta_form_limit’, ‘kc_hide_meta_keys_start’ );
  }
  if(!function_exists(‘kc_hide_meta_keys_filter’)){
  function kc_hide_meta_keys_filter( $query ){
  remove_filter( current_filter(), __FUNCTION__ );
  // Match keys beginning with field_51
  $where = “WHERE meta_key NOT LIKE(‘field_51%’);
  $find = “GROUP BY”;
  $query = str_replace( $find, “$where\n$find”, $query );
  return $query;
  }
  }
• 

  

  • Elliot

  • July 11, 2013 at 5:00 pm

  Hi @kenchase

  Thanks for the info. I’m still not sure what the issue is here. Are you asking to have this code as part of the ACF plugin?
• 

  • kenchase

  • July 11, 2013 at 11:45 pm

  Hi @elliot

  I would expect any custom fields generated by ACF to be hidden from WordPress’ custom fields drop-down list. Especially if these fields are not associated with the post type being edited (i.e. ACF fields assigned to a custom post type should not be visible when editing a page post type).

  How this is achieved is not important to me, although using the underscore prefix in the ACF plugin’s code is probably the simplest method.
• 

  

  • Elliot

  • July 12, 2013 at 5:51 pm

  Hi @kenchase

  The ACF plugin is a GUI layer for the native custom fields, nothing more, nothing less.

  I can understand that you would like the field names hidden from the dropdown but this is outside the scope of the plugin and can be achieved with a custom filter on your end.

  Thanks
  Elliot