Difference btw Group and Flexible field?

• bluantinoo

• August 2, 2017 at 11:13 pm

The new 5.6.0 version introduces the Group field type.
In what this field is different from the old Flexible Content field type?

• BocaJuniors

• February 1, 2018 at 10:20 am

I have the same question, and can’t find an answer anywhere here or on Google (searching leads to this post).

I know that Group is the newer field type. Is there a performance gain in using Group?

Say I help Jerry Seinfeld with a website, and I’ve created a field group entitled “Comedians in Cars – Shows”. In addition to the fields Guest, Place, and Date, I have a field Car and want sub-fields of Make, Model, Year, Photo, and Description.

• Guest
• Place
• Date
• Car
  • Make
  • Model
  • Year
  • Photo
  • Description

Is there a benefit to using Group rather than Flexible Content for the Car field?

I’m obviously missing something. Thanks!

• John Huebner

• February 2, 2018 at 4:06 am

A Group field is almost identical to a repeater field. A group field is a repeater that always has exactly one row.

if (have_rows('group_field')) { will always return true.

The other difference is that get_field('repeater') will return

array(
  0 => array(
    'sub_field_1_name' => 'sub_field_1_value'
    'sub_field_2_name' => 'sub_field_2_value'
  ),
  1 => array(
    'sub_field_1_name' => 'sub_field_1_value'
    'sub_field_2_name' => 'sub_field_2_value'
  )
)

and get_field('group_field') will return

array(
  'sub_field_1_name' => 'sub_field_1_value'
  'sub_field_2_name' => 'sub_field_2_value'
)

• BocaJuniors

• February 2, 2018 at 4:09 am

Gotcha.

Thanks much, John!

• John Huebner

• February 2, 2018 at 4:21 am

Then again, for anyone that’s interested…

A flexible content field is simply a repeater that can have different fields on each row.

And a clone field is a repeater that works in almost the same way as a group field, but with a few more headaches 🙂