Hello,
I’m struggling to figure out how to accomplish adding a repeater row to a post ONLY IF another ACF field’s value changed.
If I use the acf/save_post action with a priority < 10 (before the post is saved), I can compare the field’s value in $_POST compared to what’s currently in the DB for the post via get_field(). However, if I try to use update_field() to add the repeater row, it gets overwritten when $_POST is actually saved — so the new row gets cleared out.
If I use the acf/save_post action with a priority >= 10 (after the post is saved), there doesn’t seem to be a way to compare if the field value’s changed, but I can get a new value to store via update_field().
I’ve also tried using acf/update_value, but I’m running into the same priority and comparison issues…
Any ideas? Thanks!
Hi @scferg
You need to use:
$row = array(
'image' => 123,
'alt' => 'Another great sunset',
'link' => 'http://website.com'
);
add_row('images', $row);
That adds the row rather than using update_field()
Hi @jarvis
Thanks for the info. Which action and priority would you recommend using with add_row() while being able to compare new and old values from the other ACF field?
Also, how would this scenario work with updating an ACF field that’s not a repeater? Using update_field() didn’t seem to work given the comparisons needed and order of operations in my original post.
Thank you!
HI @scferg
I would use the acf/save_post filter, according to the docs:
This action allows you to hook in before or after the $_POST data has been saved, making it useful to perform additional functionality when updating a post or other WP object.
If you’re trying to update a non-repeater field, then use update_field();
You could also look at acf/update_value I wonder if this may help more with the comparison side of things.
In the scenario what you have outlined, that is to add a row to a repeater only if some other field has changed. This depends on if the repeater is being submitted when the other field is submitted.
Your comment
If I use the acf/save_post action with a priority < 10 (before the post is saved), I can compare the field’s value in $_POST compared to what’s currently in the DB for the post via get_field(). However, if I try to use update_field() to add the repeater row, it gets overwritten when $_POST is actually saved — so the new row gets cleared out.
tells me that this is the case.
For this I would use an acf/save_post filter with a priority of < 10 so that I can compare the new/old values. In this filter I would modify $_POST[‘acf’] with the added row so that ACF can then update the repeater.
// example contents of acf/save_post action
// check to see if the value is change
if ($_POST['acf']['field_XYZ123'] != get_field('field_name', $post_id)) {
// build new repeater row
$row = array(
// the row requires sub field key => value pairs
'field_123ACB' => 'new sub field value for this row';
);
// add this row to the submitted repeater
$_POST['acf']['field_ZYX321'][] = $row;
}
Hi @hube2,
Thanks for the explanation! That did the trick!
In reading documentation regarding modifying the $_POST data, I wasn’t sure how that would interface with repeater rows as the keys seemed to be named sequentially. Good to know I can modify repeater data this way.
Thanks so much!
Thank you, @jarvis as well. 🙂
The row index that is submitted is ignored when ACF is updating. It is only needed so that the browser can group the rows correctly in the data.
