Reply To: ACF Repeater sub-fields are losing / swapping content when re-ordered

• John Huebner

• August 6, 2017 at 10:54 am

This has not been completely tested and may cause timeout issue if used with options pages or excessive numbers of fields. There may be other conditions where it causes problems that I’m not aware of.

step 1, create this function

// this function with the help of 
// @gabriel dot sobrinho at gmail dot com
// http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-merge-recursive.php
function acf_array_merge_recursive_distinct(array &$array1, array &$array2) {
  $merged = $array1;
  foreach ($array2 as $key => &$value) {
    if (is_array($value) && isset($merged[$key]) && is_array($merged[$key])) {
      $merged[$key] = $this->array_merge_recursive_distinct($merged[$key], $value);
    } else {
      // change from original code
      // do not overwrite value in first array if it exists
      if (!isset($merged[$key])) {
        $merged[$key] = $value;
      }
    }
  }
  return $merged;
}

Now we’re going to create an acf/save_post filter

// low priority ensures it runs before anything else
// make lower if needed
add_filter('acf/save_post', 'acf_reorder_hidden_fields', -1);
function acf_reorder_hidden_fields($post_id) {
  if (!isset($_POST['acf'])) {
    // no need to run
    return;
  }
  /*
      You probably want to do some more checking here
      for example only running on certain post types
      or not running on options pages, etc, etc...
  */
  // get existing field values for all fields of this $post_id
  // we need to do this by getting the field objects
  // and load unformulated values
  // because we need to have field keys
  $fields = get_field_objects($post_id, false);
  // set up array to hold old values
  $old_values = array();
  foreach ($fields as $field) {
    $old_values[$field['key']] = $field['value'];
  }
  // now using the custom array maerg function
  $_POST['acf'] = acf_array_merge_recursive_distinct($_POST['acf'], $old_values);
}