Custom blocks inserted via Gutenberg editor returning JSON

• 0degreesk

• February 7, 2020 at 7:06 am

1) I’ve created custom Gutenberg blocks using Advanced Custom Fields, using the acf_register_block() function.

  
if ( function_exists( 'acf_register_block' ) ) {
  acf_register_block( array(
    'name' => 'accordion-module',
    'title' => 'Accordion Module',
    'description' => 'Create a series of expandable sections.',
    'render_callback' => 'acf_block_render_callback',
    'category' => 'client-name',
    'icon' => 'editor-justify',
    'keywords' => array( 'client', 'name', 'accordion' ),
  ) );
}

2) To my surprise, the default WordPress search is returning this content, BUT it’s returning something I can’t figure-out how to work with. This is the code I’m using in the search results page loop:

<div class="blurb"><?php
  $excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
  if ( $excerpt ) {
    $excerpt = substr( $excerpt, 0, 260);
    $result = substr( $excerpt, 0, strrpos( $excerpt, ' ') );
    echo $result.'...';
  } else {
    echo get_the_content();
  }
 ?></div>

If the search result is in an ACF block, get_the_excerpt() returns nothing. If I return the_content(), naturally the entire page is returned, but it’s formatted. When I do THIS, using get_the_content(), it appears to do a better job returning the field content but it’s full of carriage returns and the tags are escaped. This is JSON. What should I do in this situation?

• 0degreesk

• February 29, 2020 at 2:25 am

Here’s my solution. While this post hasn’t even been read, at least this will be here if someone else runs into the situation.

In a nutshell, the custom blocks that ACF can create for Gutenberg are stored as JSON in the content field which are then hidden by HTML comments.

While this hidden-JSON content is searchable and will cause an item to appear in the search result, the content itself is “invisible” to WordPress’ core get_the_excerpt() or get_the_content() functionality which you commonly use in search results. The result is a search result with no blurb.

The work-around I found for my project was to attempt to generate an excerpt. Then, if the excerpt was empty, try to generate a blurb by search for custom blocks.

The following example is a bit messy, but nobody’s even looked for the past three weeks, so… if you have questions, I’ll try to help.

<div class="search-blurb"><?php

  // Attempt to generate an excerpt
  $excerpt = get_the_excerpt();

  // If no excerpt is generated, try to generate an excerpt from ACF blocks
  if ( !$excerpt ) {

    // Grab ACF blocks  from page
    if ( function_exists( 'get_field' ) ) {
      $pid = get_post();
      if ( has_blocks( $pid_content ) ) {
        $blocks = parse_blocks( $pid->post_content );

        // Cycle through each block
        foreach ( $blocks as $block ) {

          // If the result is not empty, you have a blurb, so move on
          if ( $excerpt != '' ) {
            break;

          // Otherwise, $excerpt is still empty so try to fill it
          } else {

            /* In the following if/else block, I run through the custom blocks that I assume will have content worthy of a search result blurb */

            if ( $block['blockName'] === 'acf/narrow-content-block' ) {
              // Uncomment the following section to SEE what JSON you have to work with
              /*
              echo 'acf/narrow-content-block<br /><pre>';
              print_r( $block );
              echo '</pre>';
              */

              // The $block['attrs'['data']['narrow_content_content'] property has the best chance to generate blurb-worthy content in this custom block
              $excerpt .= $block['attrs']['data']['narrow_content_content'];

            } elseif ( $block['blockName'] === 'acf/image-video-block' ) {
              /*
              echo 'acf/image-video-block<br /><pre>';
              print_r( $block );
              echo '</pre>';
              */
              $excerpt .= $block['attrs']['data']['img_vid_text'];

            } elseif ( $block['blockName'] === 'acf/general-content-block' ) {
              /*
              echo 'acf/general-content-block<br /><pre>';
              print_r( $block );
              echo '</pre>';
              */
              $excerpt .= $block['attrs']['data']['general_content_content'];

            } elseif ( $block['blockName'] === 'acf/inset-cta-block' ) {
              /*
              echo 'acf/inset-cta-block<br /><pre>';
              print_r( $block );
              echo '</pre>';
              */
              $excerpt .= $block['attrs']['data']['inset_cta_content'];

            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }

  // Generate a blurb from the $excerpt you've generated
  $excerpt = substr( $excerpt, 0, 260);
  $result = substr( $excerpt, 0, strrpos( $excerpt, ' ') );
  echo ( $result ? strip_tags( $result ).'...' : '' );
?></div>

• Renewrmk

• April 2, 2020 at 4:17 am

Hi,

I had the same issue a few month ago. My solution was similar to yours. I highlighted the search query.
Do you found a way not to specify each block individually?
I have a lot of blocks with individual field names and I don’t want to set every block manually.
Here’s my code:

  $content = get_the_content();
    $blocks = parse_blocks( $content);
    foreach( $blocks as $block ) {
        $outercontent = array();
        if ($block['blockName'] == 'acf/pagehead') {
            $inner = $block['attrs']['data']['content'];
            $outercontent[] = $inner;
        } elseif ($block['blockName'] == 'acf/andsoon') {
            $inner = $block['attrs']['data']['andsoon'];
            $outercontent[] = $inner;
        }

        foreach ($outercontent as $innercontent){
            $innercontent = strip_tags( $innercontent );
            $keyword      = $s;
            $keyword = explode(' ',trim($keyword));
            $keyword = $keyword[0];
            $regex = "/\b" . $keyword . "\w*/i";

            if ( preg_match_all( $regex, $innercontent ) ) {
                $str      = preg_replace( "/\w*$keyword\w*/i", "<b>$0</b>", $innercontent );
                $keywordl = strlen( $keyword );
                $keywordpos = stripos( $str, $keyword );
                $strl       = strlen($str);
                $str      = substr( $str, $keywordpos - 3, 130 );
                echo '<li>...'.$str.'...</li>';

            }
        }
    }