Fatal error in update_field in repeater.php

• jensnilsson

• November 13, 2014 at 8:49 pm

Hello!

I’ll try to be as extensive as I can about this..

I’m using update_field to set an empty repeater field and get the following fatal error using PHP version 5.3.10:

PHP Fatal error: Cannot unset string offsets in /path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/advanced-custom-fields-pro/pro/fields/repeater.php on line 638

Inside the update_field function on row 633 in /path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/advanced-custom-fields-pro/pro/fields/repeater.php $value is 0 and of type string and the if-statement on row 638 erroneously evaluates to true and causes the fatal error when trying to unset inside the if-statement.

I temporarily fixed this by extending the if-statement to also check if $value is an array:

if( is_array($value) && isset($value['acfcloneindex']) ) {
    unset($value['acfcloneindex']);
}

The confirmed case is when using PHP 5.3.10 with ACF 5.1.0 and 5.1.3. It’s possible that this occurs in other places than in the repeater-code as well.

My local machine:
PHP 5.5.14
Test string offset of string:

php -a
php > $var = 'test'; var_dump(isset($var['offset']));
bool(false)

Server:
PHP 5.3.10
Test string offset of string:

php -a
php > $var = 'test'; var_dump(isset($var['offset']));
bool(true)

I checked PHP’s changelog between these versions and isset is mentioned as changed and obviously works as expected in later versions of php.

• mouzaia

• December 8, 2014 at 12:56 am

Hello,
I have the same error, with a simple text field !
if I // update_field(‘slug_de_larticle’,$cSlug); then it works.
BTW i use also a repeater field, but the text field is not a part of it.
Thanks for your help.

• mouzaia

• December 8, 2014 at 1:00 am

5 minutes later:

If i use update_sub_field instead, it seems to work !