Delete all related post_object fields when post is deleted

• adamk22

• September 18, 2019 at 9:06 pm

I’ve made a repeater that includes rows of post object fields that reference a custom post type. Whenever a user deletes a post, all the repeaters (in other posts or pages) that has a row referencing to that deleted post remain visible but with an empty value. Is there a common technique to scan the repeaters or get all acf post object/relationship fields referencing a deleted post and remove said row?

I was thinking of making a custom implementation using the wpdb class, but I am hoping for a hook or filter that I can use. I wasn’t able to find any related to my issue in the docs.

• John Huebner

• September 18, 2019 at 10:07 pm

There is nothing built into ACF that will do this for you and I don’t know of any examples of it being done. The problem is finding the fields with the values and correctly updating the repeater in a way that will not break the repeater.

I would create an acf/load_value filter for the repeater https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/acf-load_value/

add_filter('acf/load_value/name=REPEATER_NAME', 'remove_invalid_posts', 20, 3);
function remove_invalid_posts($value, $post_id, $field) {
  if (empty($value)) {
    return $value;
  }
  foreach ($value as $index => $row) {
    // your need to use field keys here I think, but you'll need to test
    $related_post = $rows['field_1234567']; // field key of relationship field
    $post = get_post($related_post);
    // I am just seeing if a post is returned here
    // you could be more thorough, 
    // for example testing to see it it's in the trash or whatever if it exists
    if (!$post) {
      unset($value[$index];
    }
  }
  return $value;
}