Reply To: Processing multiple acf_form of same type

• JoelStransky

• May 26, 2016 at 4:57 am

@James,
Thanks for the suggestion. I actually came up with a slightly more elegant solution.
First I pluralize the name attribute by hooking into 'acf/prepare_field'

// My field group contains only a single Post Object field
add_filter('acf/prepare_field/type=post_object', 'my_acf_prepare_field' );
function my_acf_prepare_field ( $field ) {
    $field['_input'] = $field['_input'] . '[]';
    return $field;
}

That will create an array of entries in $_POST

[acf] => Array
        (
            [field_573e727f24ef4] => Array
                (
                    [0] => 170
                    [1] => 152
                    [2] => 155
                    [3] => 170
                )

            [_validate_email] =>
        )

This creates 2 issues however.
1. The array keys are kinda meaningless to me.
2. acf_form_head() cannot process this. IMO it should be able to in a future version.

To fix the first issue I had to store a post id in $GLOBALS at the time I was calling acf_form()

// leaving out some context here but this demonstrates the idea
$GLOBALS['current_menu_item_id'] = $item_id;
$acf_options = array(
  'post_id' => $item_id,
  'form' => false,
  'field_groups' => array('group_573e71ff44db1'),
  'return' => '',
);
acf_form( $acf_options );

Now we can modify our earlier prepare_field handler to pluraize with meaning

function my_acf_prepare_field ( $field ) {
  $field['_input'] = $field['_input'] . '[' . $GLOBALS['current_menu_item_id'] . ']';
  return $field;
}

Which creates something in $_POST we can use during our fix for the second issue.

[acf] => Array
  (
    [field_573e727f24ef4] => Array
      (
        [172] => 170
        [173] => 152
        [174] => 155
        [175] => 170
      )

    [_validate_email] =>
)

To fix the second issue I removed acf_form_head() and called acf’s meta update manually. In my case I was saving changes to a Menu so I just hooked into the relevant filter but this could be done wherever you’re handling your form submit. This is inspired by Remi Corson

// save menu custom fields
add_action( 'wp_update_nav_menu_item', 'my_update_custom_nav_fields', 10, 3 );
function my_update_custom_nav_fields ($menu_id, $menu_item_db_id, $args) {
  if ( is_array( $_REQUEST['acf']['field_573e727f24ef4'] ) ) {
    $field_value = $_REQUEST['acf']['field_573e727f24ef4'][$menu_item_db_id];
    $field = get_field_object('field_573e727f24ef4', $menu_item_db_id, false, false);
    acf_update_value( $field_value, $menu_item_db_id, $field );
  }
}