(Filter) update_value for Group field

• cannap

• March 24, 2018 at 12:06 am

Hi i have a group field
with
seo
– title
– description field

my goal is when i not fill the title or description field in seo i want to fill it from the post title and excerpt

add_filter('acf/update_value/name=seo', 'renka_fill_empty_seo_fields', 10, 3);

 function renka_fill_empty_seo_fields($value, $post_id, $field)
 {
     // $value is still empty
     var_dump($field);
 }

but i have no idea how i can set the value for the group i know how i can do it when i use 2 filters and use the field names direct

• benjibee

• May 8, 2019 at 12:42 am

I’m running into the same issue. There’s no clear indication of this behaviour in the documentation or on these forums / StackOverflow.

• John Huebner

• May 12, 2019 at 1:24 am

A group field operates on the same principle as a repeater field. It is a repeater field that always has 1 row. I have not tried it but I would assume that update_sub_field() is what you’re looking for https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/update_sub_field/

• sporklab

• August 21, 2020 at 12:23 pm

I might be a bit off with this, but I ran into what I think is a similar issue. I look for an empty field (video thumbnail in my case), and if it’s empty, I look at another field (a vimeo video ID) and I do a little fetch of some json to grab the thumbnail URL and then save it. This has worked great for simple ACF fields.

I recently wanted to use this in a Group, and noticed the field wasn’t updating.

I had a few problems:

– I was using ‘acf/update_value/name=thumbnail_url’ which will match any field (including subfields it turns out) with that name. Cool for most of my other ACFs where I can just have one filter in functions.php to cover a bunch of different ACF fields where I need this. Not cool for this subfield, as the video ID was also in a subfield, so my function was not finding a video ID.
– I had no idea how to match a subfield in the “acf/update_value/name=foobar” format (still don’t)
– I had no idea how to fetch the subfield with the video ID

This was the original function/filter:

	// Fetch vimeo thumbnail on save - takes video ID as input
	function rf_acf_update_vimeo_thumb( $value, $post_id, $field ) {
		// only set a new value if the field is empty
		if ( $value == '') {
			// get video here
			$vimeo_video_id = get_field('vimeo_video_id');
			// fetch thumb url(s)
			$vimeo_meta = file_get_contents("https://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/$vimeo_video_id.json");
			$vimeo_meta = json_decode($vimeo_meta);
			$vimeo_thumb = $vimeo_meta[0]->thumbnail_large;
			// set value
			$value = $vimeo_thumb;
			return $value;
		} else {
			return $value;
		}
	}
	
	add_filter('acf/update_value/name=thumbnail_url', 'rf_acf_update_vimeo_thumb', 10, 3);

So to “fix” this:

– I opted to give my thumbnail field a new name since I don’t know how to match on a subfield only, so that’s now “wfh_thumbnail_url”.
– I randomly stumbled on another post in these forums that stated a subfield can be fetched by combining the group’s field name and the subfield name, so my “get_field()” for the video ID which is in the group “page_top” and is named “vimeo_video_id” is fetched with “get_field(‘page_top_vimeo_video_id’);”

With those two changes, things seem to work well.

// same, but sub-field
	// Fetch vimeo thumbnail on save - takes video ID as input
	function rf_acf_update_vimeo_thumb_alt( $value, $post_id, $field ) {
		// only set a new value if the field is empty
		if ( $value == '') {
			// get video here
			$vimeo_video_id = get_field('page_top_vimeo_video_id');
			// fetch thumb url(s)
			$vimeo_meta = file_get_contents("https://vimeo.com/api/v2/video/$vimeo_video_id.json");
			$vimeo_meta = json_decode($vimeo_meta);
			$vimeo_thumb = $vimeo_meta[0]->thumbnail_large;
			// set value
			$value = $vimeo_thumb;
			return $value;
		} else {
			return $value;
		}
	}
	add_filter('acf/update_value/name=wfh_thumbnail_url', 'rf_acf_update_vimeo_thumb_alt', 10, 3);

I do wish I could just match with ‘acf/update_value/name=page_top_wfh_thumbnail_url’…