ACF make a post private if there are no rows in a repeater field.

• damon

• March 26, 2017 at 9:02 pm

Hi,
I have posts called seminars and each seminar has a repeater field called sub_seminars with Venue Start_date and End_Date in it.

Some posts have a single row while others have multiple depending if the seminar has only one venue or multiple.

Now I have developed the logic to remove the row from the repeater where start_date is expired.

My question is, if a seminar has only one row of the repeater field and the start_date expires, the row will be deleted leaving the seminar with no rows at all.
I want to set this seminar (with no repeater rows) to private or draft so people can’t see it in the front end.

Any idea how this can be achieved ?

My code to delete the row with expired date

$ap = get_post_meta($post->ID,'sub_seminars_0_start_date',true);
        $startdate = date("Ymd", strtotime($ap));
        $todaydate = date("Ymd");
      if(strtotime($todaydate) > strtotime($startdate) && !empty($ap)){
       $del_data = array(
                    'Ref' => 'sub_seminars_0_ref',
                    'Start date' => 'sub_seminars_0_start_date',
                    'End Date' => 'sub_seminars_0_end_date',
                    'Venue' => 'sub_seminars_0_venue',
                    'Fees' => 'sub_seminars_0_fees',
                    'CPE Credits' => 'sub_seminars_0_cpe_credits'
        );
      delete_row('sub_seminars', 1);
    }

Thanks

• James

• March 26, 2017 at 10:40 pm

Hi @damon ,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

You can check the repeater row counter after your method as

$row = count( get_field('repeater_field') );

You can then place an if to check if the number of rows is 0 then update post to a draft.

Hopefully this helps 🙂

• damon

• March 26, 2017 at 10:43 pm

Could you give a little example how to set the post to private after counting the rows ?

I mean I don’t know the function to set the post to private ..

• James

• March 26, 2017 at 11:13 pm

Hi @damon ,

Thanks for the follow up.

You make use of the wordpress update_post to set the post status to draft.

Here is a related read .

https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_update_post

Hope this helps.

• James

• March 26, 2017 at 11:14 pm

Hi @damon ,

Thanks for the follow up.

You make use of the wordpress update_post to set the post status to draft.

Here is a related read .

https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_update_post

Hope this helps.

• damon

• March 26, 2017 at 11:15 pm

 $ap = get_post_meta($post->ID,'sub_seminars_0_start_date',true);
        $startdate = date("Ymd", strtotime($ap));
        $todaydate = date("Ymd");
      if(strtotime($todaydate) > strtotime($startdate) && !empty($ap)){
       $del_data = array(
                    'Ref' => 'sub_seminars_0_ref',
                    'Start date' => 'sub_seminars_0_start_date',
                    'End Date' => 'sub_seminars_0_end_date',
                    'Venue' => 'sub_seminars_0_venue',
                    'Fees' => 'sub_seminars_0_fees',
                    'CPE Credits' => 'sub_seminars_0_cpe_credits'
        );
      delete_row('sub_seminars', 1);
      
    }

    $row = count( get_field('sub_seminars') );
       if ($row == 0) {
            $postid = $post->ID; //Supply post-Id here $post->ID.
            wp_update_post(array(
            'ID'    =>  $postid,
            'post_status'   =>  'draft'
        ));

       }

There seems to be someproblem with my code. Please take a look

• James

• March 27, 2017 at 4:26 pm

Hi @damon ,

Thanks for the follow up.

Your code seems just fine.

It is possible that the $row is not returning a 0 value.

Kindly try a var_dump of the variable to ensure that the correct values are used.

Let me know how it goes.

• damon

• March 27, 2017 at 4:28 pm

Hi James,

Could you please give me some more info, perhaps an example please.

Thanks

• James

• March 27, 2017 at 4:36 pm

Hi @damon ,

Here is some sample code that may help you debug your code.

$row = count( get_field('sub_seminars') );
var_dump($row); //this should output the number of rows on returned for you to ensure that the correct value is returned.
var_dump($post->ID) //also confirm that the correct value is in use
       if ($row == 0) {
            $postid = $post->ID; //Supply post-Id here $post->ID.
            wp_update_post(array(
            'ID'    =>  $postid,
            'post_status'   =>  'draft'
        ));

Let me know how it goes.

• damon

• March 27, 2017 at 4:45 pm

Hi @james

Thanks for the help, but the problem still remains the same.

//$row = count( get_field('sub_seminars') );
//var_dump($row); //this should output the number of rows on returned for you to ensure that the correct value is returned.
//var_dump($post->ID) //also confirm that the correct value is in use
       //if ($row == 0) {
            $postid = $post->ID; //Supply post-Id here $post->ID.
            wp_update_post(array(
            'ID'    =>  123,
            'post_status'   =>  'draft'
        ));
//}

This does set the post with id 123 to draft, so that means I have some problem with the count function.

• James

• March 29, 2017 at 2:12 am

Hi @damon ,

That is quite odd.

Kindly check to confirm that your get_field returns the correct array of sub_fields.

Hopefully this helps.

• damon

• March 29, 2017 at 4:22 am

Hi @james,

I have multiple repeater rows but still when I echo the count () function, it shows me that only 1 row is there.

 <?php $rows = count(get_field('sub_seminars')); 
      echo count($rows); ?>

I don’t know what is wrong, and this is giving me nightmares.

Even the repeater that has no rows, it shows count as 1

• damon

• March 30, 2017 at 6:31 pm

I don’t know what I did but now it seems to work fine.