Reply To: Repeater field VS Select Multiple Values option

• jonKlassen

• July 24, 2019 at 10:24 am

Hey everyone! I have some questions about relational fields and the best practices.

Here is my structure: I have a custom post type called ‘Member’ that contains a relationship ACF field called ‘related_trustees’ that links multiple users (creating a bundle affect). I only need to store the users ID into this relationship.

I have previously used the “Select Multiple Values” option for relating multiple users. It seemed to work fairly easy via WP_Query to get all of the related users or get all posts that user is related to.

Now I purchased the ACF Pro version with the repeaters option and I assumed this would work even better for the purpose stated. But so far I have come across multiple new hurtles.

Pros for Repeater

• Better UI for adding and removing users in Admin panel (still pretty basic)

Cons for Repeater

• WP_query is much more complicated finding posts related to a userID. It requires adding a filter for adjusting WordPress default query.
• It bloats the wp_metapost table. Instead of a single ‘related_trustees’ record for each ‘Member’. It creates one for each repeated field. I have 2000 users, so this is a bloat. It would be something I can look past until I used my Admin Columns plugin. When I choose which field to display it doesn’t just show ‘related_trustees’, it shows EVERY metapost created with the repeater VIA related_trustee_n_trustee. This has made choosing a field for the Member post type nearly unusable.

I havn’t gotten as far as displaying the users for a specific Member post type. So maybe theres great advantages there? Please give me insight if I should U-turn back to ‘Select Multple Values’