ACF Front End Forms Manually Save

• influencebydesign

• November 22, 2022 at 1:16 pm

I need to be able to use a different field group for the frontend acf_form than I use for the field group assigned to the post type where the data will live.

This is due to extensive validation and conditional logic which makes using a subset of fields a non-starter.

I’ve run across issues because of course the field keys are different. Additionally, I have a Date field on the frontend form that needs to be inserted into a Date Time field.

How can I set up acf_form so the data doesn’t save anywhere, but I can still use acf/save_post to manually insert the data where it needs to go?

Here’s the code I was using to try and change the Date field before I realized the field key related issues.

add_action('acf/save_post', function($post_id){

    if(get_post_type($post_id) == 'progression' && !empty($_POST['acf_form_id']) && ($_POST['acf_form_id'] == 'add_transcript_entry')) {

       log($_POST);

        wp_update_post([
            'ID' => $post_id,
            'post_title' => get_field('class_name', $post_id),
            'post_name' => sanitize_title(get_field('class_name', $post_id)),
        ]);

        $user = wp_get_current_user();

        update_field('entry', 'Student', $post_id);
        update_field('user', get_current_user_id(), $post_id);
        update_field('first_name', $user->first_name, $post_id);
        update_field('last_name', $user->last_name, $post_id);
        update_field('email', $user->user_email, $post_id);
        update_field('status', 'Manual Entry', $post_id);
        $completed_at  = \DateTime::createFromFormat('!Ymd', $_POST['acf']['field_6377cef804236'], new \DateTimeZone('America/New_York'));

        update_field('date_completed', $completed_at->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'), $post_id);
    }
}, 20);

• John Huebner

• December 5, 2022 at 1:39 pm

The only way to accomplish this (that I know of) is to use the acf/save_post with a priority of < 10. This means that your filter will run before ACF saves any values to the DB. You would access the fields in $_POST[‘acf’]. You would use these field keys in your update_field() calls using the field key (not the field name). When you are done unset the input array

unset($_POST['acf']);

This last step will prevent ACF from saving anything because nothing exists.