Reply To: Programmatically adding layouts to a flexible content field

• bandv

• May 5, 2018 at 12:38 am

I am still working on this and am slowly progressing forward, I have now managed to get it to add the layout using the following code:

$field_data = acf_get_field($field);

$key = uniqid();

$field_data['layouts'][$key] = array(
	'display' => 'block',
	'key' => $key,
	'label' => 'Test',
	'max' => '',
	'min' => '',
	'name' => 'test',
	'sub_fields' => $sub_fields
);
acf_update_field($field_data);

The problem is, no matter what I pass as the sub_fields, they get stripped out by the update_field method on the flexible content plugin before the save is called on line 1334:

function update_field( $field ) {
		
		// loop
		if( !empty($field['layouts']) ) {
			
			foreach( $field['layouts'] as &$layout ) {
		
				unset($layout['sub_fields']);
				
			}
			
		}
		
		
		// return		
		return $field;
	}

I am not quite sure why this would be? Is there a way that I can re-add the sub_fields to the layout afterwards?

A note to anyone else that stumbles upon this, using acf_update_field does not refresh the cached version in the acf-json folder so you need to remove those files if you want to use this method.

Any input would be greatly appreciated!!

All the best
David