Issue with Displaying Custom Shortcode

• monksee

• November 1, 2023 at 9:43 am

I’m having trouble getting a custom shortcode to display in a post.

I have a repeater named “my_presto_player” with two text sub fields named “presto_time” and “presto_topic”.

I created the following function:

function display_presto_content($content) {
    return do_shortcode($content);
}

if (have_rows('my_presto_player')) {
    while (have_rows('my_presto_player')) : the_row();
        $timestamp = get_sub_field('presto_time');
        $optional_text = get_sub_field('presto_topic');
        if (!empty($timestamp)) {
            $shortcode_content = '[pptime time="' . esc_attr($timestamp) . '"]' . esc_html($optional_text) . '[/pptime]';
            return display_presto_content($shortcode_content);
        }
    endwhile;
}

add_shortcode('showpptime', 'display_presto_content');

Adding the shortcode [showpptime] doesn’t display any input from the sub fields at all.

What am I doing wrong? I’m very new to ACF.

• John Huebner

• November 1, 2023 at 7:07 pm

Your shortcode is just running shortcodes and not producing anything.

First your loop should be inside of your shortcode function.

Second you need to return the html

this is just a guess, but hopefully you get the idea.

function display_presto_content($content) {
ob_start();
if (have_rows('my_presto_player')) {
    while (have_rows('my_presto_player')) : the_row();
        $timestamp = get_sub_field('presto_time');
        $optional_text = get_sub_field('presto_topic');
        if (!empty($timestamp)) {
            $shortcode_content = '[pptime time="' . esc_attr($timestamp) . '"]' . esc_html($optional_text) . '[/pptime]';
            display_presto_content($shortcode_content);
        }
    endwhile;

  return ob_get_clean();
}

add_shortcode('showpptime', 'display_presto_content');

• monksee

• November 2, 2023 at 8:09 am

Hi John,

Thank you so much for helping me with this. I’m very new to ACF & obviously not that strong at writing functions.

I tried your suggestion adding the shortcode [showpptime] to a post, but doesn’t show the fields output, it just displays [showpptime]
It should be displaying the “optional text” as a link to a timestamp in a Presto Player video.

The original shortcode I am trying to use as a repeater is:
[pptime time=”1:08″]Optional Text[/pptime]

“pptime time” being the field “presto_time” and “Optional Text” being the field “presto_topic”.

The developer of the Prestom Player sent me the following to use:

$timestamp = get_field('timestamp_field');
$optional_text = get_field('optional_text_field');

// Use do_shortcode to display the content
echo do_shortcode('[pptime time="' . esc_attr($timestamp) . '"]' . esc_html($optional_text) . '[/pptime]');

“This code retrieves the values from the ACF fields and processes them through do_shortcode, creating the desired output.”

Big thanks in advance for any help you can offer.