Dynamically populating ACF block field values

• Luck3R

• January 26, 2021 at 5:42 am

Hi!

I’ve created an ACF block which is basically a heading with a list of text and images underneath, like

<section>
<h2 id="my-heading">My heading</h2>
<img>
<p>
<img>
<p>
...etc.
</section>

The ID of “my-heading” is being dynamically set in the block, based on what the user puts in a field called Section Name.

Now, I would then like to have a Table of Contents block grab those IDs and use them as anchors, so users can quickly navigate to the right section on the page.

On the internet, I found this piece of code that would help me do that:

/**
 * Get service sections
 * @link https://www.billerickson.net/access-gutenberg-block-data/
 */
function ea_get_service_sections() {

	$sections = array();

	global $post;
	$blocks = parse_blocks( $post->post_content );
	foreach( $blocks as $block ) {
		if( 'acf/service' !== $block['blockName'] )
			continue;

		$title = $anchor = '';
		if( !empty( $block['attrs']['data']['title'] ) )
			$title = $block['attrs']['data']['title'];

		if( !empty( $block['attrs']['data']['anchor'] ) )
			$anchor = $block['attrs']['data']['anchor'];

		if( empty( $anchor ) )
			$anchor = $title;

		$sections[] = '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '#' . sanitize_title_with_dashes( $anchor ) . '">' . esc_html( $title ) . '</a>';
	}

	if( empty( $sections ) )
		return;

	echo '<ul class="service-sections">';
	foreach( $sections as $section )
		echo '<li>' . $section . '</li>';
	echo '</ul>';
}

Problem is, in order to use this function to get ACF block data from the $block array, I first have to have my data in the ACF fields for it to pick them up. However, because I set those IDs dynamically using a function in my block template, my IDs never end up as values in the block fields. This means they never end up in the $block array for me to then use in the ToC-block.

Do you have any idea of how I could go about this? Is there maybe a way I could populate the actual ID field for each block dynamically?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Best wishes,
Lukas