Reply To: Import revisited

• mark66

• October 8, 2014 at 6:09 pm

I’m relatively new to ACF and love it. But, the lack of data importing and exporting is surprising. I cannot use the product for certain projects because I cannot bring in client data.

I have a solution (or workaround) that should work, but I’m not a developer so perhaps someone reading this thread will attempt it. The workaround is simply to incorporate the use of a exact field mapping between the import set and the ACF database.

Step 1 would be to create your ACF fields and groups as desired (we’ll call this the “ACF database.”)
Step 2 would be to view a report of the ACF database structure (could be a plugin from a third party that creates this view.)
Step 3 would be to prepare the data to be imported such that it matches the ACF database structure (this is really important due to recurring fields and other relational aspects of ACF) This part is up to the WordPress administrator (i.e. you!)
Step 4 would be the import of data through a script or utility – preferably inside of WordPress ACF control panel. (Again, this could be a third party utility or plugin.) This utility should provide a report on any fields that didn’t get imported and provide an explanation (i.e. field mismatch, system error, etc.)
Step 5 would be to deal with any rejected fields due to mismatch or other issue and either correct them and retry the import or just enter manually.

Some very unique and powerful things can be done with ACF and WordPress. It’s completely changed my outlook with regard to solving client issues. But, without data importing (and exporting for that matter) I’m really limited.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled nap.